Hey Zuckerberg, We Found Your Home-AI Solution in Norway

    Henrik Holen sighed when he was reading Facebook update of Mark Zuckerberg at start of 2016, where he set his personal new year mission to sort out Artificial Intelligence for his home.

    “Aah, I know a lot of the stuff you suddenly going to realize,” was the first reaction of Holen, who has been building a commercial solution since 2012, as one of the co-founders of Norwegian startup Viva Labs. “We have been working on it for little while,” he told ArcticStartup in an interview.

    Viva’s product, prices of which start from around 200 euros, controls light, security and heating systems, and learns routines of households within few weeks. “The system is plug and play, you plug it in and it learns your routines, learns the way you behave and starts controlling heating, lights, home security, all automatically.”

    So, how did Zuckerberg outlined his plan? “I’m going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I’ll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home — music, lights, temperature and so on. I’ll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I’ll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max’s room that I need to check on when I’m not with her.”

    Viva Labs has everything but friends face recognition on the market today.

    In the morning when Holen wakes up his house is heated to the right temperature, if its dark outside the lights turn on automatically, when he leaves the house alarm system switches on automatically and Viva lowers heating and turns off lights. The house knows when he is about return and heats the house, turns alarm off when he walks in and lifts the lights on. “You sit at home, it gets darker, and five seconds before you think you switch the lights on, the lights turn on.”

    “This is not a product for people who like home automation. This is a product for regular people who want to add technology to life to make it easier. So its a simple plug and play, no setup, no technical understanding needed,” Holen said.

    System of Viva — which is based in Oslo StartupLab — is on sale in Norway, and Finnish sales are due to start in March, but if mr Zuckerberg calls Holen promises to make sure also U.S. delivery will be made. “We can sell him the system which he just plugs in and it controls his home security, controls his lights, controls his heating and he does not have to think about it at all.”