Description
Aragon – Offline voice control with “Snips”
Aragon allows offline voice control with Snips and therefore works without any cloud services. As a connected device that animates product interactions with customizable voice experience, Aragon associates offline with performance. Indeed, we value privacy and we want to help to protect it. With our assistant nothing of what is said will be recorded, everything stays in the room, it is Private-by-Design. All commands are processed directly on the Aragon server located on the device. We claim that system reliability for smart homes is only possible with non-cloud-based integration. No commands will depend on internet connection. No automatic, “silent” updates may impact the installation. Once it is installed, Aragon will work for several years exactly as it worked on the first day. Of course, there will be updates with improvements and additional features, but one can always choose whether it should be installed or not, nothing will impact or change the configuration without the users knowledge.
Vocabulary
With offline voice control with Snips the vocabulary is not restricted and remains just as varied. We can even say that in the field of home automation our solutions are more powerful than those of our competitors. Indeed, thanks to the “understanding of natural language” the possibilities of commands are numerous and various. Furthermore, we have the possibility to customize commands. Thus, it is possible to control and query the equipment in your home, light, television, shutters, heating, scenes… We recently added new features, such as a hospitality mode with “DND” or “MUR” functions, internet research for restaurants or POIs, the request for the date and time, the possibility of configuring an alarm and more. Three languages are available English, French and German.
Novelties with Aragon
The major change is it size. Indeed, Aragon can be embedded in the wall. It has been designed to fit in a flush-mounted in wall box like a switch. It is connected with one Ethernet cable and powered through PoE. This makes installation easier and quicker. The size reduction makes it almost invisible.
Furthermore, Aragon is compatible with many switch fronts of different manufacturers. It integrates in color and shape with all switch series of Jung (A-series, LS990, LS-zero, CD-design, Flat-design). It can be used with any frame of 55x55mm like Basalte, Gira, MDT Technologies, Hager, Schneider, Merten, ABB, Enertex and many more.
Video introducing Aragon
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Endless integration possibilities with Node-RED
The extremely powerful but easy to use visual programming tool Node-RED is an additional highlight. Node-RED can easily be used for automation tasks by interconnecting function blocks. The programming of Node-RED requires no knowledge of a programming language. The user has access to our large library, which can be copied and adjusted. The library modules includes functions blocks as for example AND/ OR gates, or SMS & Push notifications on mobile phones up to complex alarm systems with unique features as dogs barking from the SONOS device. For example, by speaking to the smoke alarm it will respond by giving instructions about the correct behavior in case of a fire. All these functionnalities are available to the constumer which can add freely new functions, this is why there are endless possibilities.
More
One further complement to the realKNX feature list is the very powerful but yet easy-to-use visual programming tool Node-RED. Node-RED is used for building automation tasks, simply by ‘wiring together’ code blocks. It uses a visual programming approach that allows wiring together predefined code blocks (known as ‘nodes’) to perform a task. The connected nodes, usually a combination of input nodes, processing nodes and output nodes, when wired together, make up ‘flows’. Our customers have access to an extensive code library. The library demonstrates low level functionality as logical functions (AND/OR etc), SMS & Push notifications to mobiles phones, HTTP requests. We added high level functions as smart energy management modules as well as Feelgood light modules.
Due to the big Node-RED community hundreds of IoT devices are made available on the library. Likewise, it is a cinch to use the communication protocols as MQTT, IFTTT, Modbus, Enocean… Our KNX nodes allows external data points to be mapped directly to KNX.
You can also find a large number of descriptions in the internet.
Configuration
The installation is designed to be real plug and play. At start-up Aragon behaves just like a dedicated mobile app of a home server system: It reads out the configured building structure with the names of rooms and functions, as well as the type of functions. The received names will be trained by Artificial Intelligence so that they will be understood together with complete sentences. Immediately afterwards it is able to control and query the installation by voice.
This version of Aragon Base is available for the following gateways:
- JUNG Smart Visu Server
- GIRA X1
- GIRA Homeserver with Quadclient (Version 4.10 or higher)
- PEAKnx Youvi
- IKEA Trådfri
- Philips Hue Bridge
- all types of KNX / IP-Interface (tunneling or routing) / with additional configuration – no plug and play
- ProKNX proServ
- all KNXIoT compatible gateways
Technical details
Structure
- Speaker performance similar to smartphones
- 2 digital microphones for max 7-10m distance to the speaker
- H3, Quad-core Cortex-A7 mit 1.2GHz
- DDR3 RAM 512MB
- 8 GB eMMC flash memory
- Installation in a standard flush mounted box (50mm depth)
More features
- Special functions for AAL: Help call, monitoring with automatic help request
- Hospitality functions: https://knxhotel.com/en/home-en/
- Configurable voice announcements for KNX events
- Integration of SONOS speakers for voice output (instead of built-in loudspeaker, in preparation)