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Thanks. Much appreciated. There is a severe lack of resources available to the Josh customer. Perhaps its just a coincidence and bad timing.

I'm a couple of days into testing Josh. I have to say I'm finding the interaction a little basic. Some things I expect to work just don't. I expect to be able to say things like "Tell me the temperature in each room" and have it list the rooms and the temp from the thermostat that is in the room. I'd like to ask "What's playing in the house?" and have it list the music playing. I do also expect it to tell me what commands are possible, but it seems like it doesn't give a complete list. For those with Josh experience, do you have any pro tips for getting the most value from Josh commands? This is some of my failed attempts this morning though the app. Read bottom to top:

There is also a larger market of consumers that are now being educated that local control is valuable. We may see a cross over and see local control options increasing in revenue. People aren't stupid. If a company needlessly designs a product to be cloud dependent simply to generate a revenue stream (no matter the cost) people recognize it. Of course there is a good chunk of the population that doesn't care one way or another. As the home control market expands we will see how people tolerate the death by a thousand cuts of recurring fees.

Nah. But it's possible. The Ikea sonos speakers can be modified for line and bridged to do 100w mono. My design racks them vertical instead of 1u like this one.

Not holding my breath. If I decide to take the time I can do a rack solution for about $125 a channel of 100w or $250 a zone. Takes about 45 minutes a channel to gut and solder. Just not ready to take the time. Not totally sold that this would solve my needs as the situation with Josh is fluid.

The passthrough seems to impact the ability to control the app from the SR260. But it may be something is getting lost in keeping the state. I'm still working on figuring out what sequence messing things up. I think I have an issue when I tell josh to Play something in the room. I think after that the control on the AVR is out of sync. But, I am not certain. I do have some programming to turn on the AVR when the room power changes. Perhaps that's impact things. What I have is a Roku attached to a Samsung TV then SPDIF out of the TV to a balun then to SPDIF and an Onkyo receiver configured for five channels. This is working with control4. It can work with Josh, but it's not 100%. When you said you needed to keep the Roku visible for the room does that include the app switcher and "roku apps"?

Let us know when you have it working. I block it with firewall rules. Samsung TV's have parental locks on apps. You could lock the TV apps and use a player that has more options.

Maybe?

Get a room? Lets split this off to another topic. I think the best matrix/amp selection for a Josh/C4 environment is a worthy discussion. I have questions and functionality I would like to target.

I'm testing Josh with a micro. If I were testing Josh with a Core is anything different? What does a core get me if I can support my device numbers with a Micro? What if any lift do you get when you have a Core AND a Micro? I know you need a core if you have Nano's but does a Micro on a Core get you anything? They are both doing voice on the edge.

So these are apps on the TV vs apps on a Roku attached to the TV?

I have a C4 matrix, but considering building a Sonos based multi-zone amp myself using an array of hacked sonos speaker guts. The trueplay intrigues me.

The problem exists on 5.0.8.

I'm noticing a problem with the Android app when using the voice control. I don't know if this is a problem on iOS. It's a pretty simple issue I think, but annoying and impacts user experience outside of Josh. Steps to duplicate the issue: Have a media set up with Roku Open the app on a phone and ask Josh to play something Confirm the thing is playing on the TV, but don't switch the apps or cancel the voice screen. Put the phone down and let the screen sleep After the screen locks unlock it to see the Josh screen Result: Looks like Josh repeats the last command (even though I haven't said anything and it's not listening) and actually sends it to the Roku. Josh will repeat this over and over if you let the phone lock and then unlock it. It will also keep adding the response to the screen. In the below the response started out with only Now watching Momento. I then let the screen lock twice and woke it up twice. In this case the content was on Prime so the second and 3rd time when josh sent the command it launched Prime again interrupting the content and presenting the Prime profiles selection screen. The obvious solution is to "Don't do that", but this is really a very common use case. ASk the thing to do the thing and then put the phone down.

Thank you. I've made this change and will test it out.

I appreciate it. Thanks. Hoping to draw some discussion.

I have Josh authenticated with the same Pandora account I use on my C4 project. I have a Core3 with two streams that I can play concurrently with different music across my zones when using C4. In Josh the Pandora interface isn't near as feature rich as the C4 interface and only allows me to search for music and then pick. No access to stations, albums, artists etc. Is that just how this works with Josh or can I make this better with the integration? OR is it that with Josh the better integration is something like Sonos (that I don't have at the moment)? Josh can't seem to play two different streams of Pandora with my project. When I ask for jazz in the dining room and then dubstep in the bedroom it groups them both with the same stream. I need the music control to work because I don't want my office music to get changed to Taylor Swift when my 9yo gets home from school...heh. Anyone?

Josh support told me they don't have the staff to respond to customers and I'm told the facebook group is dealers. Since customers have control over this in the portal I guess I'm trying on the customer hat. I also like forums a good bit better than chat style when it comes to product discussions. Forums are self documenting knowledge bases.

I'm liking the deep linking that Josh can do with a Roku. I have mostly NVIDIA Shields, but bought a Roku because Josh has good control here. How does this integration with Roku work when you have it also integrated with C4? I guess I want C4 to control the room and want Josh to have some deep linking. Asking Josh to play XYZ when the room is off is working, but it's not turning on the AVR. I have optical out on the TV to the rack.

How do you integrate Hue and pick what to integrate? Is there a way? I had to go through and remove all of the bulbs and just leave the rooms and zones. Is there any control or options for Josh.ai to dim to off when turning off lights? The integration seems pretty basic compared to C4. What's the best way to have the Hue lights integrated into both Josh and C4?

Thanks to our forum host we have a place to discuss Josh.ai and C4 integrations. They have a dealer model and don't handle support directly. There are some nuances with how these products work together so I think a forum can really help dealers and customers. I had interest in testing out Josh.ai so I bought a single Micro and mated it up to my Core3 project. I'm about a day into the integration. I'll list some issues here, but I think it makes sense to break them out as separate topics to make a living knowledge base a little more accessible. Setting up a device is an iOS adventure only. This wasn't clear from any public facing documents and is obviously confusing since there is a Josh.ai Android app. There is a parity gap between the apps. While I used to work for Apple, we don't have any iOS products so this was a small hurdle. A user account that was blocked for some reason on the Josh side, but nothing told us what the issue was. Josh support fixed it after wasting cycles on trying to understand the problem. The Micro setup is easy when on POE. It still refuses to set up on Wifi. The import into Josh required some cleanup. At the moment its not clear to me how best to handle it's desire to control devices directly vs controlling them through C4. It's not handling more than one stream of music and is instead grouping zones. At times it has repeated itself in groups of three. Like it has a stutter. At times it asks you a question, but it's not listening for the response. Makes for a weird interaction. I've noticed some weird UI issues like in Pandora its showing some numbers where it should show track names. ... I do think it's cool. I'm confident in the platform. Hoping discussions can help smooth out future integrations.

Their commitment is to make money. In my opinion they are myopic and clearly don't understand the software world. Why would they? They make hardware.

It's a lot easier to do a display this way and also have front facing mic and prox sensor. Tell me why it doesn't have a camera. I mean, it's about a 2 dollar upcharge per device to have a front camera. No option for facial recognition or video intercom. I guess they went with the privacy minded approach.

This has not been my experience. I don't know if it matters, but do you have fixed IP's set up for the Ecobee and do you have them on a 2.4 AP ?

I think this is a very reasonable and common consideration when looking at Josh.ai. List prices get you a micro and one year of license/service for about $900. That's enough to try it in one room and use the software for with up to 100 devices.