Josh.ai continues expanding the impact of artificial intelligence in the home with a noteworthy update to its Crestron Home integration.
Thanks to a close engineering relationship between the companies, Josh.ai was given exclusive development access to expand its audio and video distribution capabilities to Crestron Home systems. Crestron Home clients are now able to enjoy intuitive control of their AV content using natural voice commands, all without requiring a professional installer to pre-program scenes or quick actions.
A hardware agnostic approach allows Josh.ai to seamlessly support any system design, no matter the complexity or specific brands that are installed. As long as Crestron Home acts as the control backbone, Josh.ai will be able to communicate with a home’s devices and use its intelligence to find specific content with compatible service providers.
Josh.ai Guided by Dealer Feedback
Josh.ai’s programming design has been guided by dealer feedback, enabling installers to set up complicated distributed AV workflows accurately and efficiently without re-doing the work they originally put into their Crestron Home deployment.
Josh.ai is pleased to announce that deployment of Crestron Home projects will follow the same simple process that integrators have previously followed with one addition. After connecting to the network, Josh.ai automatically detects and requires the authorization of the Crestron Home hub. A second authorization token is now needed to support AV distribution, which is set by the installer. For a step-by-step guide on how to integrate Crestron Home with Josh.ai, dealers can go to Crestron’s Josh.ai partner page to learn more.
After both authorization steps have been taken, Josh.ai will begin auto-populating all compatible devices that have already been programmed within Crestron Home’s interface. In addition to AV source distribution, Josh.ai natively works with Crestron Home’s lights, shades, thermostats, locks, scenes, and quick actions. Visit Josh.ai’s Crestron partner page for more details on what is possible when these best-in-class solutions come together.
Endless Possibilities
This update empowers Crestron Home dealers to offer the endless possibilities of natural voice control as an interface for their clients who want to activate their favorite channels and streaming services in every room of their home. For example, users can walk into their den and say, “Ok Josh, watch season 2 episode 3 of Stranger Things.” Josh.ai understands the request is coming from the den, utilizes a knowledge graph to find that Stranger Things is on Netflix, determines, which AV source can provide that content, informs Crestron Home of the routing that needs to be done, and Stranger Things starts playing!
In addition to the convenience of voice automation, users will be comforted by Josh.ai’s stance as a privacy-focused assistant dedicated to the smart home. Clients benefit from the peace of mind that Josh.ai is committed to providing an elegant experience without selling or leveraging customer data for marketing purposes.
Supporting Crestron Home
“We’re thrilled to expand our partnership with Crestron and this update illustrates the invaluable relationships forged in our industry.” said Alex Capecelatro, CEO of Josh.ai. “Supporting Crestron Home’s distributed AV infrastructure has been one of our most commonly requested features and delivering this functionality to our mutual dealers is a testament to the cooperation of our respective engineering teams. Our goal at Josh.ai is to make user experiences as intuitive and magical as possible, no matter the complexity of the technology in the background. While not only distinguishing ourselves from the mass market solutions, this level of Crestron Home integration gets us another step closer to our goal of providing every smart home user with their ideal experience.”
“I love that Josh.ai shares the same core values as Crestron Home where we both are unifying systems across the home to make it easy for the homeowner to interact with all of their devices. Opening the Crestron Home AV API to Josh.ai to create an even tighter integration was a no-brainer,” said Jason Oster, senior manager, product management residential solutions, Crestron Electronics Inc. “We have so many shared customers, and with the environmental integration working so well, it was the next logical progression to add AV as the next milestone in this long-standing partnership.”
“Josh.ai is constantly innovating the perception of voice control in the professional audio and video space.” said Pat Mulligan, vice president and CTO of Pacific Audio & Communications. “I was privileged to help beta test this update that ties in Crestron Home AV distribution into the Josh.ai interface. Like all things Josh.ai, it was a seamless process to integrate both platforms. Our team believes that Josh.ai is a technology that should be offered to all clients and projects. With native Crestron Home integration, it’s a no brainer to sell this as a complete control package.”
Josh.ai is proud to make this announcement with Crestron after prioritizing development to satisfy the high level of demand from the integrator community. To learn more about the Crestron Home and Josh.ai integration, sign up HERE for the Josh.ai webinar this Friday, July 2 at 1pm ET.
