Protect Your Home With Honeywell's New Lyric Gadgets

Joining Honeywell's Lyric line is a home security suite of sensors that play nice with other home automation tools.

Honeywell doesn't want to be left behind. It's been making iconic thermostats and other household tools since 1885, but the dawn of the digital home means the well-known firm has to embrace modern (and connected) gadgets.

The company could have been supplanted by the Google-owned Nest Labs and its Nest Learning Thermostat. But Honeywell responded last year with a smart stat of its own, called Lyric. Like the Nest, it learns, and can be controlled by a smartphone. Now, as multiple companies join the home automation/security train, Honeywell is expanding the Lyric line to include home security.

Lyric's new products will include a wall-mounted LCD touch-screen control panel that responds to voice commands (tell it to turn off the heat and lock the house as you head to bed), plus cameras, motion detectors, smoke detectors, and intrusion detectors. Yes, Honeywell finally has a way to add voice control to the Lyric Thermostat (something that's not in the Nest, either).

What's perhaps most important: Honeywell says the Lyric products will integrate with other home automation hubs and systems, so it'll work with other devices not in the Lyric line. You won't be locked in to just buying Honeywell products, or eschewing them in favor of others.

However, Honeywell didn't mention who those other hubs and systems might be, or even if they Lyric sensors will use an existed technology for communication, like ZigBee, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fibut it will reportedly be compatible with Apple HomeKit, a framework for developers who want devices to talk to iOS.

Pricing and availability were also not announced.

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Protect Your Home With Honeywell's New Lyric Gadgets