Vognition Voice Controls Incorporated into Nexia Smart Home Products
Vognition, the Oakland-based natural-voice-control startup that was incubated at the NJIT Enterprise Development Center (Newark), has landed a big customer in Nexia (Broomfield, Colo.), a division of Ingersoll Rand (Davidson, N.C.), which has included Vognition’s voice controls in Nexia Home Bridge.
Voice control takes place through a mobile app with a microphone button prominently displayed on its home page. Users tap the button and tell the Nexia system what they want it to do. There is no training involved because Vognition understands what you say regardless of how you say it, according to the company.
Users who prefer the voice-input method of interacting with the home-automation system can set the app to “listen,” and it will respond to voice commands whenever it is open and on the screen, Nexia said. Voice control works with switches, dimmers, ceiling fan controls, thermostats, locks, garage door controls and sensors.
Nexia has begun selling the new features in the U.S. through Nexia’s sales force, said Michael Liguori, Vognition founder and CEO. Vognition has begun marketing its technology to other smart home companies so they can incorporate voice controls into their systems, he added.
“Vognition’s voice-control solution is easy to deploy and use for all smart lights, devices, thermostats, locks, garage doors, fans, sensors, blinds and more,” said Liguori.
Some examples of simple voice commands are “turn all the lights on,” “all thermostats make it cooler,” “make all the lights turn down to off” and “thermostats, all of them, lower the degrees by 5.”
“One of the key advantages of Vognition is that it provides a full smart-home voice portal solution crossing iOS, Android, Windows, Echo, wearables and any other voice portals, so the user can choose any voice portal to control their smart home,” he added.
