Honeywell’s New Voice-Activated Thermostat

Read it here: http://gizmodo.com/honeywells-new-voice-activated-thermostat-brings-comfo-1341880055

The Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat with Voice Control builds on the the company’s Smart Thermostat line that debuted in April of this year. Like its predecessors, the new unit features a color-customizable touchscreen display that allows the unit to blend in with the room’s paint scheme; an intuitive, interview-style 7-day scheduling function; Wi-Fi connectivity and a mobile app for both iOS and Android.

But unlike any other thermostat on the market, Honeywell’s employs powerful cloud-based voice recognition technology. Simply say “hello, thermostat” to engage the unit, then tell it how you feel—”make it cooler” lowers the temperature by one degree, “make it much cooler” drops the mercury by four degrees. You can also dictate a specific temperature or temperature change. Additionally, the thermostat utilizes far-field speech recognition to ignore ambient background noise and pick out your voice from across a noisy room. Plus it will only respond once you utter “hello, thermostat,” regardless of accent, so it won’t turn on the A/C whenever you play Nelly’s “Hot in Here”.