Are Voice Assistants necessary in a Smart Home Ecosystem?

Home-A-Genius has a built-in Smart assistant meant to assist you through voice controllers (e.g. Amazon Echo & Google Home) and the widget in your mobile phones. We built this for just one reason - so that our users can activate their desired home automation, ask questions to Home-A-Genius and find out the status of their home just by asking HomeGenius questions.

We've thought this through before implementing HomeGenius. Yes, you NEED a Smart Assistant - for pure convenience.

Scenario 1: When your baby is lying on your lap and you just want him/her to continue sleeping so you can get yours too. At the same time, you need to dim the lights, turn on the air con without shouting to the Echo Dot/Google home that is across the room. You need the Smart Assistant on your phone.

Scenario 2: You are driving on the road, but you kinda remembered you left the bedroom lights and aircon on. You need to reduce the number of times you look and press on your iPhone before the TP gets you.

2 solutions to this. 1. get HomeGenius to tell you if the Air con is on. 2. Get HomeGenius to turn it off if it is left on.

HomeGenius resides in a few places.

1. Your mobile app (currently supported only on iOS)

2. Your Voice Controllers (Amazon Echo)

We've placed HomeGenius on your widget and also in Home-A-Genius's mobile app itself. This is built for users who do not have Voice controllers, located far from their voice controllers or are not within the network (i.e. far from home).

Questions I have asked HomeGenius on my mobile are mostly when i'm away from home. This may be because we have tons of Voice controllers in our home. :) The questions i have asked most often was "How is home?" and 'Show me Cat room"

Asking "How is home" will trigger HomeGenius to reply you on:

1. System: Which automations are disabled

2. Sensors: Which door/window sensors are disabled

3. Devices: Which devices are turned on.

4. Usage: How long each room was turned on for

This updates us on the home status, triggering us to go to our remote access to turn on/off certain devices if they were accidentally left on.

Asking "Show me Cat Room" will trigger HomeGenius to display details in Cat Room:

1. IP Camera in the room

2. Chart of usage of Cat room

3. Device switches of the cat room

Home Genius directly pulls out the Cat Room screen to my face, allowing me to monitor my pet just by a single command. This reduces the number of clicks before you get to Cat Room, and at the same time Cat room gets loaded while you work on other stuffs. Multi Tasking at its highest.

We have successfully integrated HomeGenius on Amazon Echo and Google Assistant. HomeGenius on your voice controllers allows you to get your voice controllers to trigger Home-A-Genius automations. This is useful when you are in the bedroom and have left your mobile phone in the study room.

You can find a list of Voice commands in your Home-A-Genius local server.

• Alexa, ask Home Genius, how is my home?
• Alexa, ask Home Genius, what rooms are on?
• Alexa, ask Home Genius, who is home?
• Alexa, ask Home Genius, for the news.
• Alexa, ask Home Genius, for the weather.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, my name is [Name eg. Boss].
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, find my phone.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, find Wife (Wife Name)'s phone.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, find Husband (Husband's name)'s phone.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, set volume to x%.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, increase the volume.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, it is too soft.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, decrease the volume.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, it is too loud.
• Alexa, tell Home Genius, do not disturb.

Find Wife and husband's phone are created dynamically i.e. it will be created based on the number of people and the relationship you have tagged as a family member in Who is In function.

do we really need Smart Assistants? You will need one if you'd love to enjoy the convenience and comfort of activating your home automation via voice commands. You will need one if you have the bad habit of rushing out of your home without being sure if you have turned off everything. You will definitely need one if you are constantly on the go, and need to keep your eyes on the road.

Smart Assistant may not be friendly to every scenario and there may be alternatives to getting your homes to be "Automated" (like getting your spouse to turn on/off the lights). However, there will always be a use case whereby #HomeGenius will come in handy.