Getting Started with a Josh.ai Smart Home — Your Step-by-Step Guide
Are you building a new property, moving into a new apartment, or exploring ways to upgrade your current home? You have come to the right place to learn how innovative home technology can improve your quality of life. We will walk you through the process of creating a world-class smart home using Josh.ai, the most advanced and private smart home AI.
Connected devices are constantly improving and becoming more affordable, which means that soon enough, everyone will be able to enjoy living in a smart home. However, if you want to get started sooner than later, here is an outline of how you can put together a simple yet magical Josh experience.
What qualifies as a smart home?
A smart home can be any type of property; like a townhouse, condo, apartment, mansion, or any other living space where connected devices improve accessibility. The connected device category continues growing with lighting, shading, music, video, climate, and access control is the most prevalent today. Josh enables you to intuitively manage all of your smart devices, not only from its user-friendly iOS app but also with the simplicity of contextual voice control.
What smart devices do you want in your home?
When deploying your dream smart home, it is important to evaluate the type of functionality required for your needs. Unless you are sold on the concept and want to dive into a fully automated home, it is best to start with a few devices that will impact you the most and then build around them.
Before looking into any connected devices, it is critical to consider the bandwidth requirements of all of your technology and invest in a robust network infrastructure. As the foundation of the smart home, your experience will depend on the stability and speed of your network.
To start, here are three essential smart home devices that will add a new level of functionality and convenience to your home:
Automated Lighting
Starting with an intelligent lighting system is an excellent way to get your feet wet with home technology. Automated lighting not only provides sophisticated control to set any mood but also offers a means to manage usage and power consumption. Lutron is the leader in lighting solutions and a recommended solution with Josh systems. Their starter Caseta line of smart switches enables you to turn your existing lights into an intelligent lighting system as quickly as replacing your light switches.
You can get a Lutron Caseta Switch Start Kit here for $99.99. Once you add the Smart Bridge Pro, Josh will be able to control all of your lights with natural voice commands and through its app.
Connected Speakers
Everyone wants to dance to their own beat so naturally, the next device we recommend adding to your smart home is a distributed music system. If you are building a new home, installing in-wall or in-ceiling speakers is an ideal option if you want a seamlessly intelligent and integrated home audio experience.
For retrofit properties, we recommend Sonos speakers that can be easily set up on WiFi to add music to every room. The Josh and Sonos integration provide a seamless setup process and limitless experience when using voice control to ask for any song, artist, album, genre, or playlist of your choice! Sonos also offers Josh’s VoiceCast feature, which broadcasts Josh’s voice responses throughout your home’s speaker system for a more connected experience.
You can get the 2 Room Sonos Set with One SL here for $378.
Smart TV
While smart lights and speakers provide an easy way to set the mood, a smart TV is a great option to add to the mix to improve access to entertainment. For a fun and convenient wow factor, we recommend adding a Roku to your IP-controllable Sony, Samsung, or LG TV so that you can deep-link to your favorite streaming services, shows, and movies. For more about deep-linking with Josh.ai, learn more here.
Josh works with every Roku device and you can buy a Roku Stick here for just $25.
Josh Control
The three device categories we covered are basic smart home options that will still provide you with a robust level of Josh functionality. However, if you want to fully equip your home, there are hundreds of devices that integrate with Josh to take it to the next level. Explore all of the devices Josh is compatible with here.
Now that you have a little smart home inspiration, it is time to consolidate all of your devices under one interface so that access and control of your system are as easy as possible. That is where Josh comes into play and why we work with certified Josh installers who make sure your devices are properly configured and connected. Once an installer hands over the keys to your Josh system, you have the ability to continue customizing and personalizing your smart home experience thanks to the user-friendly tools in the Josh app.
To get connected with a certified Josh partner, contact us here.
This article was written by Max Fiore, a Josh.ai Business Development team member. Originally from Connecticut, Max graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder, Leeds School of Business with a degree in Business Administration emphasizing in Marketing.
Josh.ai is an artificial intelligence agent for your home. If you’re interested in learning more, visit us at josh.ai.
