{"id":339971,"date":"2017-05-03T23:50:20","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T15:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1484859"},"modified":"2017-05-03T23:50:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T15:50:20","slug":"ecobee-is-building-alexa-into-its-thermostats-and-light-switches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/ecobee-is-building-alexa-into-its-thermostats-and-light-switches\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecobee is building Alexa into its thermostats and light switches"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ecobee unveiled its latest connected thermostat at the Collision conference today. Far and away the most interesting bit is its inclusion of a microphone<\/a> that utilizes Amazon\u2019s far-field voice recognition to deliver Alexa functionality. And if that weren\u2019t enough Alexa in your life, the company will also be building Amazon\u2019s smart assistant directly into smart light switches it has planned for later in the year.<\/p>\n

The Ecobee4 arrives in stores on May 15, priced at $249. The actual thermostat-centric skills sound like they\u2019ll be relatively minimal at launch, including adjusting the room temperature, naturally, but the Alexa functionality means the system ships with the 12,000 or so other skills Amazon\u2019s assistant is capable of. And far-field technology means it won\u2019t be competing for your attention with other Alexa-enabled devices.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s own press material make the whole undertaking sound vaguely ominous by \u201cweaving the power of voice into the walls of entire households.\u201d Any sort of privacy concerns<\/a> you might have had around bringing always-on microphone enabled devices\u00a0into your home almost certainly amplified when the prospect of them\u00a0into the very walls of our houses.<\/p>\n

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Amazon says that its own Echo devices listen passively as they wait for their wake word, and the company is encrypting all of the information its sends to its AWS servers. But this recent growth of third-party hardware makers adopting Alexa functionality certainly feels like the start of a larger trend. And as always, it\u2019s worth doing a cost benefit analysis of bringing voice functionality to your thermostat and walls.<\/p>\n

For Amazon, however, these sorts of partnerships are ideal. After all, the company\u2019s hardware plays have largely served as an in to other services, and all the Echo devices the company moved were really just conduits for brining Alexa to the masses. With an increasing number of hardware companies backing the assistant into their own versions of the Echo and other devices like smartphones, the company\u2019s got everyone else doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to spreading the Alexa gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Ecobee unveiled its latest connected thermostat at the Collision conference today. Far and away the most interesting bit is its inclusion of a microphone that utilizes Amazon’s far-field voice recognition to deliver Alexa functionality. And if that weren’t enough Alexa in your life, the company will also be building Amazon’s smart assistant directly into smart light switches… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

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