Snap VS JoshAI

[cnicholson]

Any rumors that C4 will announce native voice controls?  I assume, with the Halo voice buttons, this MUST be on the road map.  But any indication that that would happen in the near term?   Would certainly be consistent with this litigation and a general chilling between the companies.

Prob just wishful thinking on my part.  

[RAV]

37 minutes ago, cnicholson said:

Any rumors that C4 will announce native voice controls?  I assume, with the Halo voice buttons, this MUST be on the road map.  But any indication that that would happen in the near term?   Would certainly be consistent with this litigation and a general chilling between the companies.

Prob just wishful thinking on my part.  

Right?
Lots of AI engines to do the processing, all they need is a mic in a keypad lighting body.
Use the same buttons snap on idea to make both styles. Top tripple button for the mics, and then for do not disturb, and feedback, mute and volume use the other 3 slots.

Who knows, Amazon's loosing money in the Alexa department, they could rent out the server that does the voice to data part to pay the rent.

[msgreenf]

2 hours ago, RAV said:

Alexa department, they could rent out the server that does the voice to data part to pay the rent.

It's called AWS

[Cooper]

3 hours ago, cnicholson said:

Any rumors that C4 will announce native voice controls?  I assume, with the Halo voice buttons, this MUST be on the road map.  But any indication that that would happen in the near term?   Would certainly be consistent with this litigation and a general chilling between the companies.

Prob just wishful thinking on my part.  

I think they should do it. They can partner/buy a company and have a "Control4 Assistant"

[Dueport]

6 hours ago, RAV said:

Right?
Lots of AI engines to do the processing, all they need is a mic in a keypad lighting body.
Use the same buttons snap on idea to make both styles. Top tripple button for the mics, and then for do not disturb, and feedback, mute and volume use the other 3 slots.

Who knows, Amazon's loosing money in the Alexa department, they could rent out the server that does the voice to data part to pay the rent.

That’s my dream too built into keypads and touchscreens that’s the only form factor better than Josh Nano I think. Had hoped it would be Josh being built into c4 but if not that I certainly hope they do something themselves rather than not have a voice option (if Josh and Alexa aren’t there down road)

[cnicholson]

11 hours ago, Dueport said:

built into keypads and touchscreens that’s the only form factor better than Josh Nano I think

Since we're dreaming, to compete with Josh (or even Alexa), C4 needs an always-listening mode and a trigger word (I suggest "C4" since I am so creative).  T3/T4 could be in always listen mode-- same for Halos (although perhaps only when in charging cradle).   That would be cool.  You can't really claim to "have a house you can talk to" if the only voice path is holding a remote and holding down the voice button.

I think that would sell a lot of Halos and could push people to buy some (or more) touch panels in order to get broader voice coverage.  Plus T4's speaker and always-on nature is much better for snappy voice feedback-- especially versus speakers connected to AVRs that take a long time to wake up).   I can also imagine C4 offering a direct-swap Keypad the has a Mic and maybe even a small speaker (and, presumably, WiFi connection independent of Zigbee/wired "control" connection)...

[JSTRONG]

I’m sure control4 has already spent millions trying to do this. 

[RyanE]

12 minutes ago, JSTRONG said:

I’m sure control4 has already spent millions trying to do this. 

I'm sure you're not Control4's accountant.

RyanE

[Topspin14m]

The solution is to partner with Amazon or Google or buy Josh AI. Then integrate the voice assistant into Halo. Honestly, I was wondering why Josh AI wasn’t already integrated into the remotes and now we know why.

Developing a well functioning voice assistant seems incredibly difficult and costly. Apple barely has one. Sonos has one but it’s pretty narrowly focused on just music and it’s own products. I’d be surprised if Control4 has tried to tackle this.


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[cnicholson]

24 minutes ago, Topspin14m said:

Developing a well functioning voice assistant seems incredibly difficult and costly

Yeah, I don't think they need to make it a general-purpose Google/Alexa "ask me anything" system.  Just a narrow control-oriented system would be awesome.  Being able to control devices and kick-off scenes is all I need.  Maybe set a timer, or ask the weather for bonus points.  But I don't need it to answer trivia questions (at least not in v1).

[Topspin14m]

Yeah, I don't think they need to make it a general-purpose Google/Alexa "ask me anything" system.  Just a narrow control-oriented system would be awesome.  Being able to control devices and kick-off scenes is all I need.  Maybe set a timer, or ask the weather for bonus points.  But I don't need it to answer trivia questions (at least not in v1).

I wasn’t thinking they’d have it answer trivia questions, but there are a massive number of third party integrations in C4. Doing it right in a way that customers would be happy with would be hugely expensive. Even if you or I are willing to accept something half baked, others will have higher expectations (from using Alexa and competitive products) and they don’t want to get skewered.


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[Control4Savant]

17 hours ago, Cooper said:

I think they should do it. They can partner/buy a company and have a "Control4 Assistant"

Not going to happen…

We have had a few different pro VC systems for years without development on that front. Josh was perfect for this and its somewhat exclusivity with C4 seemed to be a future. Savant actually has discussions about a brand VC and even some marking but I’ll likely be dead before we finally see any of that. It is I imagine extremely expensive even in this environment for any brand.  Something like VoicePod would have been…Snap’d up’… if there was really a big calling for it. 

[Gary Leeds UK]

5 hours ago, RyanE said:

I'm sure you're not Control4's accountant.

RyanE

Control4 is no longer a company ~ it is part of Snap ~a sales company of bits and bats 

[RyanE]

28 minutes ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

Control4 is no longer a company ~ it is part of Snap ~a sales company of bits and bats 

Yeah, I'd heard that.  And yeah, the accountant is more a corporate position, not directly part of the Control4 business group.

That said, JSTRONG is also not Snap's accountant...

:)

RyanE

[msgreenf]

2 hours ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

Control4 is no longer a company ~ it is part of Snap ~a sales company of bits and bats 

Don't even understand what that means.. but ok

[RyanE]

15 hours ago, msgreenf said:

Don't even understand what that means.. but ok

Not much.  Just some pointless sniping and nitpicking.  'Snap' is also not a company...

Neither SnapAV *nor* Control4 are actual businesses any more.

Control4 is a brand within Snap One.

The most important part to me is that most of the engineering staff are the same as they were under Control4.

RyanE

[msgreenf]

2 hours ago, RyanE said:

Not much.  Just some pointless sniping and nitpicking.  'Snap' is also not a company...

Neither SnapAV *nor* Control4 are actual businesses any more.

Control4 is a brand within Snap One.

The most important part to me is that most of the engineering staff are the same as they were under Control4.

RyanE

But fundementally it doesn't change the fact that engineering is still can occurring under the brand. And the brand will continue to evolve and grow. In fact, as far as I can see as an outsider engineering has accelerated with the investment of a larger company

[GregCAMS]

This is quite unfortunate a turn of events but hopefully at least current state does not get worse in terms of integration.  The VC of Josh has definitely opened up our use of the system more than other interfaces like the C4 T3/T4 touchscreens have.  The ability to do compound commands, program multi-function scenes far easier than When>Then, and the usability by guests and the wife have all been benefits of Josh in conjunction with Control4.  Combine that with the ability to learn items like my Lutron shades without even needing the dealer to come out to the house to program and use via Josh is fantastic.  Other industries regularly have ongoing litigation and suits (oil & gas, automotive, Google/MS/Apple) and still have ongoing and mutually beneficial strategic partnerships.  Josh needs more development and has strengths in voice.  Control4 has weaknesses in UI and timing to market of offerings their competitors offer.  So recognizing the gaps and the benefits especially for end users like this community are important to maintain and keep progressing.

[JSTRONG]

Good write up Greg. I think we will continue to see great control4 and josh integration. It would be in everyone’s best interest. 

[booch]

On 8/18/2023 at 10:24 AM, Topspin14m said:

Developing a well functioning voice assistant seems incredibly difficult and costly. Apple barely has one. Sonos has one but it’s pretty narrowly focused on just music and it’s own products. I’d be surprised if Control4 has tried to tackle this.

I agree — it also doesn’t make sense from a product perspective, as much of the user experience is outside the home/C4’s space, e.g., phones, cars — not to mention being competitively foolish.

Case study in the making on the topic is GM’s recent decision to replace CarPlay/Android Auto with a in-house system — a hot dog vendor rather than an MBA could predict how this will end.

[cnicholson]

39 minutes ago, booch said:

it also doesn’t make sense from a product perspective

 

IDK.  I think it depends on what "it" is.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that C4 offer something that people would buy *instead of* Siri/Alexa/Google, but rather some kind of better bridge/integration/support for having C4 stuff being controllable via voice commands interpreted by one of these existing voice solutions.  The existing Alexa/Google C4 (semi) support is evidence of this approach.  Halo talking to AppleTV (and, thus, Siri/Homekit) is another quasi step in this direction.

I think voice control is becoming so ubiquitous in the low-end consumer space that the absence of some kind of C4 workaround is going to be an increasing impediment to selling expensive C4 deployments.  I think they need to do better, and fast.  I suspect the biggest challenge for tighter integration with the big boys (Apple/Amazon/Google) is not so much the competitive threat that those guys would perceive, but more along the lines of "Don't care/not strategic/why bother?"   

Josh.ai is the most obvious partner, but they are a niche product already, so tough for them to further their narrow their market and corporate "Enterprise Value" / exit potential by being seen as too tied to one player (C4).  Plus the natural strategy of everyone wanting to be the "center of the universe" versus a "mere add-on."

So the economic realities are tough, but I think they must do *something*, IMHO.

I biased toward the Apple ecosystem, but I would love C4 to buy (or build) a C4/Homekit bridge driver, and make it a supported solution.  That would be (relatively) cheap/easy for C4 to do, and they could charge for it-- and it might also "pull through" additional Halo sales.

[Control4Savant]

25 minutes ago, cnicholson said:

 

IDK.  I think it depends on what "it" is.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that C4 offer something that people would buy *instead of* Siri/Alexa/Google, but rather some kind of better bridge/integration/support for having C4 stuff being controllable via voice commands interpreted by one of these existing voice solutions.  The existing Alexa/Google C4 (semi) support is evidence of this approach.  Halo talking to AppleTV (and, thus, Siri/Homekit) is another quasi step in this direction.

I think voice control is becoming so ubiquitous in the low-end consumer space that the absence of some kind of C4 workaround is going to be an increasing impediment to selling expensive C4 deployments.  I think they need to do better, and fast.  I suspect the biggest challenge for tighter integration with the big boys (Apple/Amazon/Google) is not so much the competitive threat that those guys would perceive, but more along the lines of "Don't care/not strategic/why bother?"   

Josh.ai is the most obvious partner, but they are a niche product already, so tough for them to further their narrow their market and corporate "Enterprise Value" / exit potential by being seen as too tied to one player (C4).  Plus the natural strategy of everyone wanting to be the "center of the universe" versus a "mere add-on."

So the economic realities are tough, but I think they must do *something*, IMHO.

I biased toward the Apple ecosystem, but I would love C4 to buy (or build) a C4/Homekit bridge driver, and make it a supported solution.  That would be (relatively) cheap/easy for C4 to do, and they could charge for it-- and it might also "pull through" additional Halo sales.

VC has very little to do with the ultra luxury market. It’s usually a consumer level and power user requested feature.  We have in the past discussed why yelling at a device across the room is seen as a somewhat un elegant solution. I would guess thats why we are seeing Josh increasing its reach on overall system hardware. 

[booch]

56 minutes ago, cnicholson said:

 

IDK.  I think it depends on what "it" is.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that C4 offer something that people would buy *instead of* Siri/Alexa/Google, but rather some kind of better bridge/integration/support for having C4 stuff being controllable via voice commands interpreted by one of these existing voice solutions.  The existing Alexa/Google C4 (semi) support is evidence of this approach.  Halo talking to AppleTV (and, thus, Siri/Homekit) is another quasi step in this direction.

I think voice control is becoming so ubiquitous in the low-end consumer space that the absence of some kind of C4 workaround is going to be an increasing impediment to selling expensive C4 deployments.  I think they need to do better, and fast.  I suspect the biggest challenge for tighter integration with the big boys (Apple/Amazon/Google) is not so much the competitive threat that those guys would perceive, but more along the lines of "Don't care/not strategic/why bother?"   

Josh.ai is the most obvious partner, but they are a niche product already, so tough for them to further their narrow their market and corporate "Enterprise Value" / exit potential by being seen as too tied to one player (C4).  Plus the natural strategy of everyone wanting to be the "center of the universe" versus a "mere add-on."

So the economic realities are tough, but I think they must do *something*, IMHO.

I biased toward the Apple ecosystem, but I would love C4 to buy (or build) a C4/Homekit bridge driver, and make it a supported solution.  That would be (relatively) cheap/easy for C4 to do, and they could charge for it-- and it might also "pull through" additional Halo sales.

Well said/we're generally in agreement -- I was commenting more broadly on 'center-of-the-universe' voice platform market entry and basic buy vs. build vs. partner logic in doing what they need to do to meet the niche.

Your assessment of Big Tech-challenges sounds right; however, the longer-term investment/competitive risk of them not enabling downstream integration in a space as broad as the home should be motivating (or dynamics will change).

Have no idea what the deal is with Josh but that could be the case and/or they were hoping it'd quickly turn into a sale and things just generally soured when it didn't, which happens all the time.

Lastly, I think the bigger question for C4 is where to play/their business model over the longer-term. The 'dealer-double down' via bolt-ons and sales pull through strategy made perfect sense for H&F's purpose but will become sooner rather than later become untenable IMO.

[Dueport]

4 hours ago, cnicholson said:

 

IDK.  I think it depends on what "it" is.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that C4 offer something that people would buy *instead of* Siri/Alexa/Google, but rather some kind of better bridge/integration/support for having C4 stuff being controllable via voice commands interpreted by one of these existing voice solutions.  The existing Alexa/Google C4 (semi) support is evidence of this approach.  Halo talking to AppleTV (and, thus, Siri/Homekit) is another quasi step in this direction.

I think voice control is becoming so ubiquitous in the low-end consumer space that the absence of some kind of C4 workaround is going to be an increasing impediment to selling expensive C4 deployments.  I think they need to do better, and fast.  I suspect the biggest challenge for tighter integration with the big boys (Apple/Amazon/Google) is not so much the competitive threat that those guys would perceive, but more along the lines of "Don't care/not strategic/why bother?"   

Josh.ai is the most obvious partner, but they are a niche product already, so tough for them to further their narrow their market and corporate "Enterprise Value" / exit potential by being seen as too tied to one player (C4).  Plus the natural strategy of everyone wanting to be the "center of the universe" versus a "mere add-on."

So the economic realities are tough, but I think they must do *something*, IMHO.

I biased toward the Apple ecosystem, but I would love C4 to buy (or build) a C4/Homekit bridge driver, and make it a supported solution.  That would be (relatively) cheap/easy for C4 to do, and they could charge for it-- and it might also "pull through" additional Halo sales.

Very well said! I couldn’t agree more!

[msgreenf]

Personally I just don't find voice to be a compelling ux