Manage your home’s temperature or lights by voice; Home Control is also headed to Pixel.
Google Home is getting a little smarter. The Amazon Echo competitor now plays nice with Belkin Wemo and Honeywell devices to help you control your home’s temperature and lights.
With the new Honeywell integration, you can “conveniently manage your home’s temperature without leaving the comfort of your covers—just say ‘Ok Google, turn the temperature up downstairs,'” Google Assistant Product Lead Gummi Hafsteinsson wrote in a blog post.
The Belkin Wemo integration, meanwhile, should help when you can’t remember if you turned off the bedroom lights. Now, you won’t have to go back upstairs or to the other side of the house to check: “When you’re headed out the door… just say ‘Ok Google, did I leave the bedroom lights on?'” Hafsteinsson wrote.
These new features come after Google last year announced Home integrations with Nest, Philips Hue, and Samsung SmartThings to help people control their lights, thermostats, and switches.
To try out these features, go to the Google Home app, select Home Control, and click the “+” button to add a new device. Home Control is also slated to arrive on Pixel at some point “soon,” Hafsteinsson added.
For even more control, you can leverage the automation service IFTTT to create custom voice commands for your Google Assistant on Home and soon Pixel. For instance, “instead of saying ‘Ok Google, turn on the living room lights,’ you can say ‘Ok Google, I’m home’ (or another command of your choice) to turn the lights on,” Hafsteinsson wrote.
For more, see How to Set Up Your Google Home. And for answers to all your smart home questions, check out our connected home column from Stacey Higginbotham, Get Smart With Stacey.
