Tag: proknx

Home Automation rules! Especially with  the new Aragon Maestro feature

Home Automation really does rule, now that the Home Automation Rules feature has been incorporated into the Aragon Maestro toolkit. This feature lets users create recurring automations using natural language input. Aragon Maestro can be controlled in real-time with on-the-spot voice commands. Now, with the new Home Automation Rules feature, actions can also be scheduled to work automatically during a period of the user’s choosing, or in relation to day/night natural light changes.

How It Works

The Home Automation Rules feature provides a web-based interface where users type commands in plain language to create automation rules. The system accepts input in English, French, or German. An on-device Large Language Model (LLM) processes these text commands and converts them into structured schedules that the Maestro then carries out automatically.

Examples of supported rules include:

  • “Turn on the kitchen lights 15 minutes before sunset every day.”
  • “Activate cozy scene at sunset on weekends.”
  • “Set the bedroom temperature to 22 degrees on weekday mornings.”
  • “Close all shutters at 10 PM on weekends.”

The web interface displays all active rules and allows users to add, edit, enable, disable, or delete them as needed.

Complete Privacy and Offline Operation

The Home Automation Rules feature operates entirely on-device with no cloud dependency. What’s said at home, stays at home!

On-device processing: Natural language parsing, rule scheduling, and command execution all happen locally on the Aragon Maestro. The system requires no internet connection for its core functions.

No data transmission: Automation rules are stored in a local database on the device. Nothing is transmitted to external servers or analyzed by third parties.

Reliable operation: Because the feature does not depend on internet connectivity, scheduled automations execute reliably regardless of network status.

What Can Be Automated

Any action that can be controlled through voice commands can also be scheduled as an automation rule. This includes:

  • Scenes: Activate predefined scenes such as “Movie Night” or “Good Morning” at specified times.
  • Lighting: Control lights to turn on at sunrise, dim to a specific percentage, or turn off at bedtime.
  • Shutters and blinds: Schedule blinds to open in the morning or close at sunset.
  • Heating: Set temperature targets for specific rooms at designated times.

Technical Implementation

The Home Automation Rules feature consists of three main components working together:

Natural Language Processing Engine: An on-board LLM interprets user input and extracts the command to execute along with scheduling details (time, days, solar events, and offsets). The system uses language-specific prompts to accurately parse commands in English, French, or German.

Scheduling System: A scheduling engine converts parsed rules into scheduled jobs. The system handles both fixed-time rules and solar-based triggers. For solar events like sunrise and sunset, the engine calculates precise times based on the user’s geographic location and updates these calculations daily to account for seasonal changes.

Execution Layer: When a scheduled time arrives, the system publishes the command to the same MQTT endpoint used by Aragon’s voice control system. This ensures that any command that works via voice will also function as a scheduled rule.

Multi-Language Support

The system provides native support for three languages. Users can write rules in their preferred language, and the LLM correctly interprets scheduling expressions such as:

  • English: “every weekday”, “at sunset”, “on weekends”
  • French: “les jours de semaine”, “au coucher du soleil”, “le week-end”
  • German: “an Wochentagen”, “bei Sonnenuntergang”, “am Wochenende”

The backend normalizes these expressions into a standardized format for consistent scheduling across languages.

User Interface

The web-based interface provides a straightforward workflow:

  1. Users enter a rule in natural language
  2. The system parses and validates the rule, showing the interpreted command and schedule
  3. Users confirm and create the rule
  4. All active rules are displayed in a list with options to edit, enable/disable, or delete

The interface also allows users to set their location (city or coordinates) to ensure accurate calculation of solar events.

Availability

The Home Automation Rules feature is available as a software update for all Aragon Maestro users. The update can be installed through the Maestro’s web interface. For more information about Aragon Maestro and its capabilities, visit heyaragon.com.

Spotify on Aragon – A Technical Overview

Spotify Voice Control use on Sonos via Aragon Maestro

Introducing Aragon Maestro’s new feature for controlling Spotify playback on Sonos speakers! This new solution is engineered with a privacy-first, offline-focused approach that leverages on-device processing for all sensitive actions. How does Aragon process the request? Read on to find out.

System Architecture and Data Flow

The control sequence from voice command to music playback is executed primarily on the local network, minimizing external communication.

  1. Voice Data Acquisition: A local network Aragon Satellite (WL or PoE) captures the user’s voice command requesting certain music. The raw audio data is streamed directly to the Aragon Maestro over the local network.
  2. On-Device Speech-to-Text (STT): Aragon Maestro processes the incoming audio stream using the on-board Whisper ASR model for speech-to-text conversion. This entire transcription process occurs locally on -device with no voice data sent to the cloud.
  3. On-Device Natural Language Processing (NLP): The resulting text string is fed into a local, on-device Large Language Model (LLM). This AI-driven model interprets the command, identifying the user’s intent, e.g., play, pause, skip, and the relevant information needed to carry out the command , e.g., artist name, song title, playlist. This allows the system to understand complex, natural language queries without relying on predefined vocabulary or cloud-based NLP services.
  4. Spotify API Interaction: Once the request is understood, the Aragon Maestro makes a targeted, anonymous query to the Spotify API. This is the only point of contact with an external cloud service. The purpose is strictly to enumerate tracks, albums, or artists based on the user’s request, and to retrieve the necessary identifiers for playback. No user-specific or personally identifiable information is transmitted by the Aragon system in this query.
  5. Local Sonos Control: Using track information from Spotify, the Maestro issues a command directly to the Sonos speaker(s) over the local area network (LAN). This instructs the Sonos system to stream the selected media directly from Spotify’s servers.

Key technical differences between Aragon and generic smart speakers

  • Private-by-Design: The entire voice processing pipeline (STT and NLP) is self-contained within the Aragon Maestro, ensuring user voice commands are never exposed to the internet.
  • Local Network Operation: All communication between Aragon Satellites, the Aragon Maestro, and the Sonos speakers occurs on the local network.
  • Minimal Cloud Footprint: The only external communication required is a stateless, anonymous request to the Spotify API for discovering music. There is no constant connection or data exchange with Aragon-hosted cloud services.
  • Integrated AI: The use of on-device Whisper and LLM technologies provide advanced, flexible voice control without need for an internet connection to process commands

Use cases for the new Sound Event Detection Feature

Recently, we launched Aragon Maestro’s all-new Sound Event Detection (SED) feature. The graph of detected sounds is pretty to look at, but what can the detection of these sounds be used for?


Imagine that you are not at home. Suddenly, your smart-home system sends an alert to your phone. It has registered sounds of breaking glass, doors or cupboards opening and closing, and/or footsteps. You know that the house should be empty. A quick call to the police, and the burglar is caught red-handed!

Now think about your elderly mother who is at home alone. She has been ill recently with a bad cold, but she doesn’t like to worry you about how she is feeling. The sounds of incessant coughing are detected over a few days. Time to have the doctor in before her health deteriorates further!

The SED feature also picks up whether TV or radio have been left on, and if the beloved dog or cat of the inhabitant barks or meows intensively for a prolonged time. Detection of regular day sounds such as flushing toilet and running water noises are also important. The presence or absence of these sounds raise an alert that the user needs to be checked on, to make sure that they are in good health.

The usefulness of each detectable acoustic event logged by the sound event detection feature can be personalized for individual users, with alerts sent out when the absence, or presence, of particular sounds are pinpointed.

In the Future:

From this strong foundation we plan to develop more useful features in the future, such as

– detecting the presence or absence of users to automate certain smart appliances

– detecting abnormal sound patterns when users are away from home to increase security

Watch this space for new Aragon Maestro developments!