Netatmo wants you to control your home via Facebook Messenger, too

By Lulu Chang Published January 7, 2018

With the convenience of text and instant messages, we can sometimes barely be bothered to actually speak to even the best of friends or family members. After all, why fatigue your vocal cords when you can just take out your iPhone or open Facebook Messenger to get your point across? So naturally, you don’t want to raise your voice to chat with your virtual assistant. Netatmo understands, and has now unveiled the Netatmo Smart Home Bot, a personal assistant that promises to manage your connected home using text.

Accessible via Facebook Messenger, this bot understands communicating viaour primary method of communication — text. By leveraging natural language-processing algorithms, the Netatmo Smart Home Bot both understands and responds to your requests related to your smart home. For example, ask the bot, “Who is at home?” or tell it, “Turn on the light,” and you’ll receive either an answer or an obedient reaction. Moreover, the more your use the Messenger bot, the better it is able to respond to (and anticipate) your needs.

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“The home can now communicate with its occupants and act accordingly. For example, the order ‘I am leaving’ will turn off the lights, close the shutters, and activate the highest level of surveillance for [your] security cameras,” said Fred Potter, Netatmo’s founder and CEO. While a number of the company’s products are already compatible with voice-activated systems like Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant, this newest integration provides a different level of accessibility.

“Thanks to typed commands, we provide users with great mobility and privacy,” Potter said. “People don’t necessarily want to use voice control in public … or at the office. They can now text to discreetly ensure that everything is running smoothly at home.”

To begin a conversation with Netatmo, simply start a conversation via Facebook Messenger with the Netatmo Smart Home Bot. The bot is free and already available in English, though the company assures us that other languages are forthcoming later in the year. The Netatmo Smart Home Bot is compatible with all Netatmo products, as well as accessories and, of course, any “with Netatmo” product. So if you’re looking to give your voice a rest, this may be the smart bot for you.

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Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…

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