Mark Zuckerberg controls his home with Jarvis; these 5 tools will let you do the same

You may have already heard of Jarvis from the Iron Man series. If Iron Man isn’t your interest, then the second Jarvis mentioned by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could capture your attention. Zuckerberg’s home automation AI is called Jarvis as well.

Jarvis is something that Zuckerberg built himself, from scratch using Facebook’s in-house tools. These include deep-learning and Messenger APIs that Facebook uses to power Facebook.

Zuckerberg gave Fast Company an exclusive peek into his home and demonstrated Jarvis at work and we must say, we’re a bit jealous. Jarvis isn’t just your average home automation “AI” like Alexa or Google Assistant, it’s a custom-built program that learns from experience.

Using Facebook’s tools, Zuckerberg has taught the system to understand who’s speaking be it himself, his son or his wife, identify context when asked to do something. For example, Zuckerberg says that while he would say “Turn on the lights in the living room” while his wife would say “family room” instead. He’s also training the system to better understand voice commands and the subtle nuances of human speech.

Jarvis is very cool, but it’s not a commercial product. It’s just Zuckerberg’s pet project and nothing more.

Now we’re not all Zuckerberg and most of us are either too lazy or don’t have the time or the inclination to design our own home automation AI from scratch. Luckily for people like us, there are already a number of tools that can do what Jarvis does, and maybe even better.

When it comes to home automation and AI, there are some things we expect: Controlling lighting, appliances and security systems, playing music or movies on a device of our choosing, reading us our news, updating calendars, maintaining to-do lists and much more.

More importantly, we want all this to work seamlessly from wherever we are. Having this system automated is even better.

Considering all of this, the best option right now does seem to be Google Assistant.

Google Assistant

Google Assistant (GA) is relatively new and only available on Android 7.0. Currently, it’s only accessible via the Google Pixel smartphone, the OnePlus 3 (with custom ROM) the Google Home speaker and a handful of other devices.

Despite limited availability, diving right into the Google apps and devices ecosystem is the best thing that you can do for easy-to-use home automation.

Provided you have supported hardware, you can control your entire home with just your voice. This includes turning appliances on and off (via Smart Switches), lights, dimmers, thermostats, music, TV, Google Services (Gmail, Contacts, Search, Calendar, etc.).

You can even set alarms and timers, maintain to-do lists and much more with GA. It’s also smart enough to play music in a specific room or video on a specific TV for example.

However, the feature that makes GA special is support for IFTTT (If This Then That). IFTTT is a kind of computer logic that can be used to write conditional scripts that Google calls recipes. You can, for example, write a script that will start playing, say, classical music when you unlock your door.

GA still doesn’t have any deep learning capabilities yet, but they can’t be far. A number of free recipes for GA are available here and can be enabled from anywhere in the world.

Alexa

Alexa is essentially GA from Amazon. It hit the market before GA, however and it’s thus more easily available and has a lot to offer.

Just like GA, Alexa attempts to tie your home and smart accessories together with an AI-based voice assistant (this assistant is Alexa). For control, you can either use a smartphone app or the Amazon Echo speaker.

Alexa also supports IFTTT and Amazon calls these scripts Skills instead of recipes, but they’re essentially the same thing.

Alexa supports a great many gadgets, as much as GA and more. However, Alexa requires more meddling to properly setup and GA’s deep connection with your Google account make the latter a more user-friendly option.

Apple HomeKit

This is identical to Alexa and GA in terms of functionality, but is limited to control from Apple devices. HomeKit also doesn’t support as wide a range of devices as Alexa or GA and support for IFTTT and the like is lacking.

However, if you’re deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem and don’t mind spending more money on HomeKit compatible devices, you’ll have few complaints.

SmartThings Hub

This hub from Samsung is like a stripped down version of the previously mentioned home automation tools. Think of it as a central server for all your SmartThings-compatible smart devices. You control the hub via an app and the hub controls everything else.

It does support IFTTT, which is nice, but it’s not as well integrated into Google’s or Apple’s ecosystem as GA and HomeKit, and it’s not as feature-rich as Alexa.

It’s still not a bad option, though. It’s only real advantage is that it’s relatively cheap. Given its limited features, however, it might be better to just dig a little bit deeper and opt for one of the big three.

Wink Hub 2

The simplest, no-nonsense offering, Wink Hub 2 isn’t exactly smart; it’s a hub with an app that helps you turn things on and off. Think of it as a wireless switchboard and home notification centre that you can carry around in your pocket.

It is compatible with Alexa, however, making it a great starting block for an Alexa-powered smart home that you might be working on.