Josh Avis 6

They suck. Spent a fortune on it. Never ever use them. Their customer service and tech support and distributors are incompetent and try to rip you off. Integrated Smart Homes is absolutely terrible.

IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING INVESTING IN JOSH, READ THIS FIRST.

I found Josh at CEDIA years ago when I was in the tech industry, and decided to spend thousands of dollars integrating it in my 8,000 foot home (with about $500,000 invested in home automation: Control 4, Lutron, etc.). I will detail only a small part of my disappointment and frustration here.

First, if you were led to believe that there is actual Artificial Intelligence in Josh-Ai, you will be disappointed. As Josh's Director of Sales explained to me (he's no longer with the company) the "learning" that Josh does is on the "macro" level -- learning from what users say across the platform in all installations, and making small adjustments to correct "global" misunderstanding. YOUR Josh system will NOT learn from YOUR interaction.

If you watch the marketing videos and think they represent reality in your installation, you will be disappointed. You cannot give commands in natural language, UNLESS you (or your integrator) have programmed pretty much those exact words and phrases into Josh. And, even if the phrases work one time, don't expect them to work the next time.

For a year, my Josh Nano in the bedroom would "wake up" in the middle of the light and flash brightly. They were aware of this problem, but could not figure out how to fix it. (I was told that the Nano's needed to "re-boot" daily, but I could not choose a different time of day). I put a piece of tape over it so it would not wake me up.

Often, I will have to repeat the same phrase multiple times to get Josh to perform the desired action. Often, it still will not perform, so I'll go to a Control 4 screen or Lutron switch and press a button. I was told to design specific scenes in Josh, and enter specific phrases -- not exactly "natural language artificial intelligence". The verbal feedback is rudimentary and unhelpful. The "room awareness" is intermittent.

Awhile back, after a month of back & forth when the system was not working at all, the controller had to be replaced. It now, again, works intermittently.

I could go on and on. I have sent many emails to my integrator and departments and people at Josh, but the system remains unreliable, at best. They reply quickly, but the product simply does not work as advertised. I have asked for a 30-minute video call where I would walk around my home and speak commands and show them my frustration, but that has not happened.

Perhaps their end game is to get bought by a serious player with the funds needed to make Josh actually work as advertised. I hope so.

I’ve had Josh AI for over a year and I’m probably going to throw it all away. It’s much more frustrating than it is helpful. It speaks too softly, hears terribly and generally is not effective as a controller for home automation. If you have any background noise at all, Josh will not understand you. Often even in silence it will not understand. Or it “is having trouble processing voice commands” or “it’s not sure which device you’re referring to”. Frequently when it’s having trouble it replies with “huh?” Which I wouldn’t tolerate from anyone, let alone a robotic “helper”. My wife agrees. Alexa worked much better. MUCH BETTER. But we don’t want Alexa in our home, so looks like it’s back to walking across the room. Which is hilarious, that we need a device to do all these things.

Totally unusable! I had josh installed a few weeks ago and still can not use it for anything. Every command I give executes wrong. I ask it to turn on the T.V. and the blinds close. it is not only incapable of executing commands but the chat gpt will not recognize questions. it just keeps asking you to repeat yourself. not to mention there is a long delay in responses , sometimes minutes long. I tried to get help from the people at Josh.ai, but they made it clear they do not help owners of Josh. For the extreme cost of 4 thousand dollars this thing is a complete scam. it has no A.I. functioning at all and is just a rotten Alexa that is overpriced.

it was the perfect place