The smart speakers now tracking temperature and humidity in the home

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2 — While there are already a slew of smart devices that can measure your home’s climate, this technology is now coming to select speakers. In addition to streaming music and offering an intelligent voice assistant, these devices can now measure the temperature and humidity of the room in which they are located.

Until now, for a smart speaker to provide a temperature reading, it had to be paired with a connected thermometer or weather station. On the new generation of HomePod and HomePod mini from Apple or the Echo and Echo Dot from Amazon, this information will come directly from the speaker.

These products contain a temperature sensor, optimized for indoor home environments, i.e. an ambient temperature between 15 and 30 degrees Celsius. However, the accuracy of the sensors could very well decrease with prolonged audio playback at high volume levels. In addition, it will be necessary to wait a little after powering up before the speaker can provide its first measurements. Note that Apple’s speakers can also measure ambient humidity levels.

These functions can be controlled by voice, simply by asking Siri or Alexa what the temperature is in the room. The presence of this sensor can also be used for automation, such as turning on a fan or closing blinds when an interior space reaches a given temperature.

These innovations directly compete with connected devices specially dedicated to measuring the climate and air quality, even if the speakers are not yet able to detect the presence of fine particles, CO2 or radioactive gases in the house, as do for example the Airthings sensors. — Studio ETX