Why is my thermostat a speaker? And why can’t I turn it off?

Yes, in theory you can just “not use it” but I have toddlers that keep managing to AirPlay to it despite my best efforts on the iPad front (Apple is also very bad at allowing you to disable things you don’t want). For such an incredibly incongruous and nonstandard feature there should at least be a simple toggle to disable it. There’s a volume setting but that doesn’t matter as soon as a device is connected. I’m having to look into firewall rules to block AirPlay to it entirely and that is ridiculous.

**Edit:** Technical tips are welcome, parenting tips are not.

**Edit 2:** Apparently this feature is only possible through HomeKit for some reason. But since we don’t use Apple Home and adding the thermostat didn’t work, I guess that’s it.