Ecobee’s smart thermostat is the first third-party device with Siri on board

From The Verge: First announced at Apple’s WWDC earlier this year, Siri has now landed on Ecobee SmartThermostats. The Apple voice assistant arrives via a free software update allowing you to say “Hey Siri” to the thermostat to set the temperature, send an intercom message, and use all of Siri’s smart speaker features.

This is the first third-party device to include Apple’s virtual assistant Siri, although the feature is not exclusive to Ecobee. Apple said that all HomeKit accessory makers will be able to integrate Siri voice control into their products starting this year. For any integration to work, you will need to have a HomePod Mini on the same network, through which the device (in this case the SmartThermostat) will send the requests.

The function only works with the newest Ecobee SmartThermostat with voice control ($249.99), which has a built-in microphone and speaker and has supported Amazon’s Alexa since its release in 2019. You can’t have both AIs active at the same time, however; you have to choose, but you can switch back at any time.

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