I imagine they need time to build up the necessary experience to support the product well. Nest's support, the one time I had to call them, was outrageously good. Within about 10 minutes the engineer had figured out exactly what was wrong with my wiring setup, and, more or less blind, walked me through the discovery and installation of a common wire.
I just tore one off my ceiling and threw it into the garage at 3am just last week. I was excited about this one until I saw the price. $129! Yikes! I got a few lithium battery detectors at Home Depot for $20 that are supposed to last for 10 years.
I have a box full of shards of smoke detectors that I have ripped off the ceiling and hurled down the stairs because they went off while I was cooking, or making tea, or sneezing nearby. The nest thermostat is fucking stupid, but this smoke detector appears to be a genuine improvement. I would pay twice this price if it works.
Why do you think this? It's been a huge win for me. I routinely forget to adjust my thermostat when I leave the house, even sometimes on out-of-town trips. You could argue that I'm just a dumb idiot -- OK, that's fine -- but this hasn't been a problem since I got a Nest. Add in the other (relatively minor) energy conservation features and the savings have been pretty big.
Its probably just me but both of Nest's products are not necessities. I mean they are nice to look at but I don't care much about the problem they solve for me to go and switch. And they are usually twice the price of a regular one so there is that.
I wonder what the split on Nest thermostat sales is between new construction/refurb builder/contractor installations vs. "end user". Whatever it is, I think the smoke detector will be more skewed towards the former.
$129 is a lot for a consumer, especially without all the immediately tangible and potentially cost-saving benefits of the thermostat. But for a developer selling a condo, being able to advertise "Nest fixtures throughout" might be worth $1000.
I love my pair of Nest thermostats, but don't feel motivated to buy this.
Having recently bought a newly built house, I'd say that it's more likely that they'd offer the option of Nest fixtures throughout for the low, low price of only $1,000 extra.
Is it, really? I mean couples routinely blow that on 1-2 dinners out without any thought at all, at least in the demographic they're targeting. You're paying something like a 2x purchase cost for a much smarter, well-connected device – that seems well within the range that upscale consumers will pay for almost any sort of better made appliance or furnishing.
Most fire departments will also give them to you for free. My brother is a professional fire fighter and always has a box of them in the back of his truck to hand out to people. They'll even do volunteer events where they'll come and inspect your house to make sure you have proper placement and they're not too old.
At $60 each I might replace the 5 I have in my house, at $130 I don't think so.
As other people have pointed out, the Nest detector uses photoelectric detection and multiple of them will link together. Comparing it to a $20 ionic detector is apples to oranges.
A photoelectric smoke detector seems to be around $20 on Amazon and CO alarm is ~$30, so you're right - it's between 2-3 times more. I was basing my comment on the actual pricing seen on the shelf at hardware stores here (DC), which is higher.
That said, it's hard to compare the base price without starting to talk about features: i.e. the cheaper detectors on sale around here tend not to have things like the LED needed to tell which of 5 alarms is currently going off. That part costs a few pennies but the pricing jump to get it much higher, at least for what was on offer at my local Home Depot last year when we replaced everything.
The link text says "Smoke Detector", but I only found "Smoke Alarm" on the Nest page. I used to work for a smoke detector manufacturer. It's been over 10+ years, but there was a clear delineation between home "smoke alarms" and commercial "smoke detectors". Detectors had central monitoring and usually were linked to an outside service. Alarms were standalone and sold to consumers.
One thing that's interesting is that the video shows it uses photoelectric smoke detection. Most home systems use ionic detection, which is better for large particulates. When these sound, either the house is already on fire or you burnt the steak. Photoelectric detectors are better for detecting small particulates - the smoke before the fire - and they are less prone to false alarms.
I don't think the definition of detector is a stretch here, depending on how Next implements it. The units will talk to each other, so presumably there is a master node playing the monitor role, and it could certainly phone home in an event same as the thermostat unit does.
> Most home systems use ionic detection, which is better for large particulates. ... Photoelectric detectors are better for detecting small particulates - the smoke before the fire - and they are less prone to false alarms.
Other way around. Ionization detectors are more sensitive to small particles, while photoelectric detectors are more sensitive to large particles.
Large fires tend to burn "cleanly," producing smoke particles that are not too visible. While smoldering fires tend to produce lots of visible smoke -- the type that a photoelectric detector will identify.
[Slaps forehead.] I got the fire type / particle size reversed. The sad thing is I actually took the fire marshal's exam on the subject. But I guess, like in college, the moment I walked out of the exam room my mind became a clean slate.
In my area building codes require they install smoke and CO detectors. One such contractor just advertised their new condos as being super intelligent.
By law my house requires 3 (that I can remember) smoke alarms. $390 to use Nest Protects instead is far too far above the price of convenience, even $130 is about $100 more than I think a good smoke detector should cost.
Nest's marketing seems to target a wider range of people than that which I think would be interested in their products. I've worked in an Apple reseller, I've seen how much disposable income most people have, and Nest are massively over-targeting their products. These are for the guy who used to buy 2 iPods, in case one broke.
This is a home expenditure. It's not for a temporary product like the ipod. Lots of people have entirely different budgets for permanent objects in their home. Upgrading that beige blemish of a smoke detector purely for looks will be worth $130 to many.
My city requires a smoke alarm both outside and inside each bedroom. For my 5 bedroom house, that's over $1000. But the fact that I've had to wake up 3 times in 3 years in the middle of the night to disconnect all 5 "exterior" alarms to clear the "carbon monoxide" (low battery) noise makes it kind of worth it...
Why is this not a dual-band wifi repeater (and maybe even bluetooth audio device, as well)?
I was really hoping that all the stuff on the ceiling would take advantage of the prime physical position there once it all became smarter. As it stands, I love what Nest is doing but I'm pretty underwhelmed by this. The motion sensor integration with the thermostat is a good start.
So they should only offer it on the wired ones. Would be quite a good sell, actually (probably best left as an unsupported "hack" so Nest doesn't have to provide support for failed wifi topologies).
I meant more for voice recognition stuff that is keyword activated. Presumably with better mic coverage we will eventually not have to hit the button to activate siri/now.
The more interesting thing here is how it interfaces with the thermostat and makes both better as a result. Turning off the furnace when the carbon monoxide alarm is triggered is worth it by itself. For those of us living in snowy climates with children, this is a big deal on its own.
In addition, the improved awareness of when you're home, extra safety lighting, etc are all interesting as well. I don't see this as a smoke detector a step towards a smarter, safer, more energy efficient house. Perhaps the discussion should be about what else it is, not necessarily that takes on the main role of a extra fancy smoke/CO detector.
Note that a smoke detector should be on the ceiling, and a carbon monoxide alarm at ~1.5m high on a wall. Putting it on the ceiling as well could very well result in late alarms.
(Source: a friend who nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning)
Where are sources of carbon monoxide poisoning? The only two off the top of my head are near the garage and the fireplace. You could augment this system with 2 more plug-in type CO monitors that would put them lower on the wall. For any other room that doesn't have a CO monitor right now this is just a bonus.
Perhaps the CO is generally produced mixed with other more heavier gasses and is colder, thus less conveyant.
I can't find source but I found a pamphlet that mentioned that when in fire you shouldn't try to crawl on the floor for risk of CO poisoning, or something.
CO is a product of combustion, and will therefore be hotter than the ambient air in most cases. The primary reason manufacturers say CO detectors should be a bit lower on the wall is to avoid false positives (well... not really false, just alarms for events you don't really need to worry about). A little CO emission is expected during the normal operation of gas/wood burning appliances. A CO detector at the ceiling might go off when it detects these little 'puffs' of CO. In practice, a CO detector should be averaging the level of a couple minutes, and not worry about short transient peaks (which is what I suspect the nest detector does).
If you're in a fire, stay low and get out. Source: I'm a firefighter.
Not really, you can buy CO2 sensors COTS for HVAC guys to prevent "stuffy" rooms. Its industrial grade product and price and you won't be buying them at walmart but the UI is very HVAC-dude oriented. Also if you sell dry ice you're supposed to own a permanently wall mounted one even if you officially keep the stuff outside (depends on local building code and licenses and regs I'm sure)
There's a different UI for combustion gas analyzers, most any HVAC guy owns one if he does furnace work. They're about an order of magnitude more expensive and the ratio of CO2/O2 tells you quite a bit about the level of draft (and they usually have a CO sensor too which only comes into play when draft/mixture is tremendously rich)
There certainly are, although they're not typically intended for home usage. But in industrial/commercial setups which use CO2 (beer/drink-cellars, dry-ice handling, pressure pipe-flushing, etc) they're relatively common. Obviously they're always detecting some level, but they're set to trip or alarm when concentration hits some threshold over ambient. http://duomo.co.uk/CO2_Alarms.aspx is just one example.
Low-O2 detectors are also common, and approach the problem from the other direction. They're more useful for N2 or other inert gases, since you're less concerned with toxicity and more with plain asphyxiation. IIRC they're used in some places to enforce "No riding in the same lift as the liquid-N2 dewar" safety rules.
Everything I've seen shows that it generally tends to mix with air or rise slightly due to its slightly less dense weight, and all the sources I found say you can either use the ceiling or wall.
Gas heating of water in bathroom and/or kitchen is a very popular one. We had this discussion a while back here on HN, basically US doesn't have them, but Europe and UK still has a lot.
That's true for CO2, but CO is actually slightly less dense than air (1.20 kg/m^3 vs 1.23 kg/m^3 according to Wikipedia), and tends to mix with air or rise slightly above it:
Read the instructions on your CO or smoke alarm about where to place it. It's true that most CO detectors are designed to be placed on walls, but combo detectors are often built to be placed like smoke detectors, on or near the ceiling. You want to prevent both false negatives and false positives.
Due to the second law of thermal dynamics, I question the battery status of your friend's CO detector, as CO will fairly quickly equalize throughout the area.
I see this as the real value to those with potential CO sources in their houses. You pay out the nose for home insurance all the time and rarely need it. The proposition here is insurance that if another piece of hardware malfunctions and could possibly kill you, these two devices working in tandem can possibly save you or someone else in a home.
I think this comment should be much higher. I agree, this isn't just a fancy smoke/CO detector just like the Nest isn't just a thermostat with an iPhone app. It's a thermostat that will save you money by automatically adjusting to heat/cool your house as needed. This is not just a smoke/CO detector but rather a way to network all your detectors together, have them tell you (Actually talk to you) where the fire is, easy dismiss ability, night light, remote monitoring, and more.
I'm guessing that like the Nest thermostat they have an external web site (nest.com) you can register the device with, and then perform config via that site.
I wonder if anyone's sniffed their Nest's traffic to see if it's encrypted?
While this is very cool, I'd like to hear more in regards to how multiple Nest thermostats can work together. Ideally there would be one expensive unit and several other attachable units, much like how you can extend Wifi range. The carbon monoxide detector would make for a great addon unit, a "plugin" of the master smoke detector unit.
I absolutely love my Nest thermostats, and I think they were worth every penny. I'd buy them again in a heart beat. So I have faith that this will also be a great product. But the problem is that my house needs two thermostats, but 12 smoke alarms. If I only needed 2 or 3 of these, I might be tempted. But I can't see spending over $1500 on replacing my smoke alarms. I suppose maybe they don't all need to be replaced, but if it doesn't interoperate with my other hard-wired smoke alarms, it could actually be a net decrease in safety (if the non-Nest alarms start going off and the Nests don't).
Yes. Ever since I got the thermostats, I've wanted add-on sensors for other rooms. The placement of the thermostats in my house is not great for setting the temperature in the rooms I actually care about, so it would be great to have additional small sensors in the primary living areas. It seems like they could make it an all-in-one device -- a Nest extension that works with both the thermostats and the smoke alarms.
Same situation. I have two Nest thermostats and I love them, but there's no way I'm going to drop close to a thousand dollars on replacing all my current (functional) smoke alarms. The price point is just wrong -- I hope they adjust it down the road apiece. I'd rather spend them money replacing lightbulbs with LED.
Pretty cute, waving at the alarm to shut it up, which is what people often do anyway to try to get smoke from cookie away from it. Would have been more fun to just be able to yell shut up at it, though. :) Although I guess you have a user training requirement for that.
Nest is very adept at charging large amounts of money for solutions to small problems. Dealing with the shortcomings of modern smoke detectors is a minor annoyance at best, and (at least for me) isn't worth anything even remotely approaching what Nest is charging. Keep in mind that this detector provides no increase in safety, and if anything is a regression because it postpones alerting the user to prevent the annoyance of false positives. You are paying only for convenience.
Adequate smoke detectors can be purchased for $20. Is the minor increase in convenience really worth shelling out over 6 times that amount, possibly at the expense of safety?
(EDIT: as others have pointed out, this also serves as a carbon monoxide detector. The implication from the product page is that this product is designed to be placed on the ceiling. What could possibly go wrong?)
As I said, some of them have no overly obvious battery compartment. Either it's on the backside, or internally and you have to unscrew it open. Not all have an obvious battery compartment.
And it's incredibly annoying when you have to climb onto a chair/table/whathaveyou because your ceilings are so high you can't naturally reach it.
The one in my last apartment even had a big button in the middle. I thought I might be able to press it in order to turn off the alarm temporarily. That was not a good idea.
I don't mind the chirps but I do often have huge problems finding out which fire alarm has a low battery - as some of our ceilings are (I think) 14ft going up and down a ladder multiple times isn't a lot of fun...
[A few years back our neighbouring apartment had a nasty fire - so I went out and bought a lot of fire alarms, fire blankets etc. - we weren't at much risk as our walls are about 1m thick sandstone. However, it did mean I ended up replacing all of the batteries in the "new" alarms at roughly the same time.]
My solution is to just go an replace them all. Much faster than trying to track down the one, especially in a 2 story house where the chirp echos and isn't repeated very often.
The one in my last apartment was electric, but I believe still had a backup battery. And still chirps like the devil if that goes out, but you can't even just remove it, because then it'll chirp at you for not having a backup battery in place. And there's no way that I know to turn that chirp off.
See how that might be annoying in the middle of the night with high ceilings in the first place, and no replacement battery available?
At their price point that is a pretty damn expensive convenience? How are they any different in requiring batter changes? At 129 I will just laugh it off as another appeals to people want others to think of them differently.
Nest is trying to market the same way as Apple does, they appeal to Vanity through different directions. Expecting people in the market segment to feed off each other.
The article says it pretty well. There are no horrible chirps, it'll alert you in a humane way that hey, your battery is low and you need to change it.
They've clearly found a problem (current alarms suck) and have made a solution. Just because you don't see the convenience doesn't mean other people don't, as is clear from the comments here. Once you get burned by regular smoke detectors in the middle of the night, you would pay good money for a product that actually fixes some of these issues.
My smoke alarm is connected to the mains electricity. No need for new batteries ever. Just a simple extension from the power outlets in the attic and down through the ceiling.
I don't know that one brand is that much better than another. But for something like a smoke detector, you'd probably feel better buying one of the big brands.
Just make sure they're lithium, non-rechargeable batteries, with an expiration date about 8 years in the future.
It can hook into an existing Nest thermostat and turn off the HVAC, which could be a source of fire or CO. It also can serve as a low level light at night that's motion activated, so you can find your way down the hall without turning on the full set of lights.
Yeah, it's a bit pricey, but it's definitely better than the Thermostat for value and more within the price range I'd expect for a Nest device.
That's a nice safety feature. The other nice feature that most of the commenters here seem to have missed is that these devices are designed to improve your Nest's auto thermostat feature by knowing where people are in your house. You are basically putting an extra sensor for the nest in every room.
Actually, that might be the deal /maker/ for me. I am away from home for a day at a time, then when I work from home I'm nowhere near the thermostat, so the whole "sensor" thing doesn't really work - which, to their credit, they told me, before I purchased.
As a homeowner, it's way in the other direction for me. The thermostat does an excellent job of saving us money through our heating bills. And compared to other thermostats that can talk to a phone app or web app, it's cheap.
This however, will cost more than a comparable sensor for our simplisafe security system. It doesn't call into a central monitoring station, so I can't get the same insurance discount I do now. Nightlights are, imo, more or less of a solved problem, so I don't see that as really adding value.
I was going to agree with you, and then I remembered the night that the smoke detector in my rental started chirping every few minutes. It was around 3 AM. We had really high ceilings, so if I stood on a chair, I could almost reach the smoke detector to disable it. It took a solid 15 minutes of my standing on my tippy toes trying to figure out what would make the chirping stop. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I was mere minutes away from using a baseball bat.
It turns out it was the smoke detector's "self-destruct" chirp. A new battery wouldn't even do the job. Had to buy a new smoke detector because the old one had reached its age limit.
That night if you had asked me to pay $100 so that I could go back to sleep and not have to worry about THAT CHIRP, I would have whipped out my wallet so fast.
I understand that conventional smoke detectors can be irritating, but I still don't see how an experience like that is worth an extra $110. I suppose the calculus is different for people with far more money, but for most people, I don't think that smoke detectors pose a large enough annoyance to warrant buying the Nest.
How much did the loss of sleep last night cost the above poster in their job the next day? It isn't about how much money you have, it's about how valuable your time is.
Unless you're a freelancer/contractor, the loss of efficiency probably costs you nothing. It costs your employer, so maybe they should be funding your smoke detector?
We're long past the point where you should be replacing smoke alarm batteries at all.
Put in a lithium battery. The lithium battery will last for the entire 10-year life of the smoke alarm. Thus, you should only replace smoke alarms -- not the battery.
In fact, these days, they're selling smoke alarms with sealed non-replaceable lithium batteries. This prevents people from attempting to use an alarm past end-of-life, and thus getting a false sense of security.
Oh whatever LOL. It'll be marketed as lasting a decade and value engineered to only last a year. You don't increase profits by making things last longer. By being sealed and making it chirp you'll force people to buy another instead of simply unpluging the battery.
The problem with a nanny state is eventually people rebel. The future of smoke detection is high profits for mfgrs and residents will spend an hour their first day in new premises disabling and disconnecting the devices. The overall effect on safety will be a profound net decrease, although theoretically on paper we'll never be safer.
I seem to recall seeing my first lithium battery smoke detector back in the 90s. I certainly haven't bought a non-hardwired detector that wasn't one of the 10-year lithium battery type in the past decade. (You'd have to ask my electrician what he just installed in my renovated house, I haven't looked too closely at them yet.)
Haven't given me any problems. Haven't heard about them giving anyone else any problems. You seem to be dismissing something that already has a proven track record. Why is that?
If you want to know, remotely, if your house is burning down, you can spend $450 a year for a monitoring service and who knows how much for a system that dials them in case of alerts, or you can buy Nest.
I see this as priced against monitoring services and systems that phone them.
Well, if your house is burning down, and you're not in it, there's not anything you can do anyway, and you finding out before you get home doesn't change anything, so that's not that useful.
The problem is Nest doesn't connect to a central monitoring center (as far as I can tell) and many insurance companies require central monitoring. I would love to have these, but I won't buy them if the insurance company won't sign off on them.
That night if you had asked me to pay $100 so that I could go back to sleep and not have to worry about THAT CHIRP, I would have whipped out my wallet so fast.
See, you say that, but it isn't just one smoke detector. It's ALL of them. My small house alone has no fewer than 4 plus a CO detector. That's $500, real money to save me from an occasional hour of lost sleep or, at worst, an extremely rare night? The value proposition just isn't there.
This reminds me of the HN post I saw a few days ago for a wake up call service - someone suggested "$20-$30 a year" for it. For an alarm. To wake you up.
While I don't doubt that people out there will pay for both, let's not kid ourselves that it will be a mass-market product. The value proposition is way off.
We just moved into a condo which had a very old [Nov 1999] BRINK's home security installation that we didn't intend to use.
When we first moved in all the keypads said: "CALL 1-800-<WHATEVER> FOR SERVICE. NOT READY."
We were not interested in a home-alarm service, so we simply left them alone and went about our move.
Fast forward 3 months: these alarm pads would start beeping in the middle of the night.
We had a friend watching our house during the day: they'd _never_ beep during the day, not once.
Around 1AM though they'd go off and starting chirping in 15 second intervals.
The first night: we were able to silence it by hitting "CANCEL" on the keypad.
On subsequent nights we could silence it for [what seemed like] a random period of time between 15 minutes and several hours.
Perhaps it was just the sleep deprivation, but I swear by the fourth night you couldn't shut it up for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Fed up with the alarm: I headed downstairs, pajama-clad, with my multi-tool and a flash light.
---
Turns out: this is the "low battery alarm" -- we cut open the strongbox and disconnected a sealed lead acid battery and shut off the breaker. (Which coincidentally takes out our CO alarms, but it was worth it for the peaceful slumber.)
The battery did test bad so I disposed of it. (Shame: I wanted to repurpose it.)
It seems that these sorts of "self-destruct" alarms are DESIGNED to (A) go off when you're likely to be home (night-time hours) and (B) they are hard to ignore (e.g: exhibit some kind of non-deterministic pattern.)
Because the alarms are so annoying, people often end up disabling the alarms and never replacing them. That's dangerous in the long run. In the short run it's dangerous to try to disable an alarm in the middle of the night. I wonder if anyone has ever died from a fall while attempting to stop the chirping in a sleep-deprived state.
That's the thing: we still haven't replaced our CO alarm.
Given how integrated it is into the BRINKs panel: it's doubtful the CO alarms would've even worked while the BRINKs panel was powered but unactivated.
Now we are left with keypads [we don't want] and deactivated CO alarms bolted in to our freshly painted walls. sigh
I'm not particularly annoyed by the behavior itself: false alarms don't bother me, and a low battery alert is definitely a useful "error code."
What bugs me is that it should be easy to dismiss the "low battery warning" for _at least_ 8 to 12 hour windows. Long enough that you can actually get some rest and deal with it in the morning / after your shift.
Might make sense for fire alarms: but this home alarm system had a battery that was in a sealed strong-box in a midwestern US basement.
tl;dr: the battery, in this case, was in a room that is continuously controlled for humidity, temperature, and in this case: light.
--
The system usage should also be pretty static: as our house guest was home and presumably tripping the motion sensors all day. (Yes: even though the system was unarmed _and unactivated_, our motion sensors still appeared to be _sensing._ -- It's purely coincidence, but this ordeal started right around when the Internet was in an uproar over PRISM & the NSA.)
Retiring to our unprotected bedroom dwellings for the evening would've only _decreased_ the system's draw, if it had any impact at all.
The Nest Protect adds several hardware components that a traditional smoke detector doesn't have, including an ambient light sensor, a distance/motion sensor, a multicolor LED, and WiFi. If your only problem with the current smoke detectors out there is the chirp, then it can be solved by adding just the light sensor and LED, which is not a large cost addition. The additional cost of adding networking hardware, creating a protocol for these to talk to each other as well as the thermostat, and creating a mobile app just to configure the nightlight is what really drives the price so high here.
Hopefully the innovative ideas that they are using for conveying that a battery is low or stopping the alarm from going off when cooking make it into other designs. Quite frankly I don't see the benefit added from networking my smoke detectors.
Exactly. I have no interest in adding any more computer networks or nodes to my home, nor do I wish to provide Internet services on public IPs, etc. I don't need the complexity in my life, nor do I need the attack surface (nor the trade of legacy annoyances for modern annoyances).
BUT, I do need a smoke detector that doesn't make me want to kill myself every time I interact with it - I already have printers for that. Here's hoping there's an easy way to completely disable all networking on these devices...
Smoke/Carbon Monoxide detectors have been an enormous issue for me.
Many of the detectors that use a 9V battery backup have a poorly designed chamber holding the battery. Often the battery doesn't make good contact with the metal contacts inside the detector. This results in constant false positives that the battery is low. When it actually does run low, I'm forced to start this cycle over and over again of: find "new" battery, alarm still chirping, is the "new" battery really low or is it the battery chamber misaligned again, etc.
The dog loses another 3 months of her life from stress whenever this happens. I've never seen an animal so scared of a constant chirp.
So when these things start chirping at 2am, and I can't tell if the batteries in the drawer are brand new, instead of dealing with a scared dog, and possibly buying yet more new batteries, the detector comes off the ceiling and ends up in a drawer of blankets to dampen the noise as the chirping takes awhile to die after the detector is removed from power and battery removed.
Additionally, I help with many things around our condo association. I'm constantly changing batteries in these detectors. But first I need to find them. You hear a chirp that the battery is low, and now you have to find it somewhere. Maybe it's in the common hallways of 3 floors of units, or maybe it's a unit owner's. This involves me walking around the building trying to catch one in action of chirping.
I've been a loud detractor of Nest in the past because of their use of Facebook ads spamming my friend list, but I welcome an intelligently designed detector and am going to gladly spend the money to buy at least two of these and will hopefully get the condo association on these. The dog is going to be very happy. :)
I bet there are CYA reasons that current smoke detectors are as annoying as they are.
Smoke detector or not, it is inevitable that there is going to be a fire, and people
will get hurt, and nobody wants to be the maker of a smoke detector that wasn't as
annoying as possible about signaling for battery replacement.
With the nest and the text message, I would worry about the text number/account credentials
getting stale/lost over time, and then when someone gets hurt in a fire there will
be liability shenanigans.
I wonder if they could use the motion sensor to alert people of a low battery. I'd much rather hear a chirp every time that I walk by than while I'm half way through a good night's sleep.
> the detector comes off the ceiling and ends up in a drawer of blankets to dampen the noise as the chirping takes awhile to die after the detector is removed from power and battery removed.
You can generally hold down the test button to quickly drain the internal capacitance (sometimes with interesting audio effects).
>> Often the battery doesn't make good contact with the metal contacts inside the detector. This results in constant false positives that the battery is low.
This is probably not bad design. The smoke detector is trying to tell you something.
This is also about those of us with means helping to mainstream the technology. As we buy and help work out the bugs the technology will (hopefully) become cheaper and more widespread. When this happens we'll find low cost and intelligent devices become more accessible and hopefully become standard fare in new homes. It has practically happened already for the smartphone. Who says it can't, and shouldn't, happen here?
To be honest they also look kind of cool, while average smoke detectors don't. I imagine this being a big factor, since you're going to have one of these on the ceiling in every room.
I don't see this as priced against a $20 smoke alarm. I see this as priced against a smoke system that phones a monitoring service so your home is protected while you are away. These systems are easily $60 - $100 per unit plus the base station plus a recurring fee ($45/month in my area).
Nest pricing is far cheaper than the combination of these, while giving you active remote monitoring peace of mind.
There are a whole lot of product types where an adequate one from Walmart costs $20, but plenty of people spend $100+ on better ones. For instance, anything you can put in a kitchen. Not sure why so many objections to this product even existing.
Would like to see a model more like Ninja Blocks (base device with inexpensive remote sensors) then the idea of buying several more expensive components.
Would have been ground-breaking if the Nest smoke detector was a $20 or $40 networked addon to the original Nest thermostat.
The motion detector is a trojan horse for introducing other functionality. It could probably serve as a general alarm system as well, with a software update.
What are some other apps that can come from an always-on wifi-enabled set of sensors?
This will find its biggest market (I think) in NYC apartments - you only need 1 usually, and tiny unventilated kitchens are a near guarantee to send off an alarm.
I lived in an apartment where we essentially had a broom handle hanging next to the alarm because it was inevitable, and during Sandy blackout the thing constantly chirped because its landline was disconnected. Not a good experience.
I love these new takes on old devices, however, my five $15 smoke, heat and co2 detectors from different brands have been proven and tested over time...
I wouldn't want to be the one that finds the first bugs in this new nest smoke detector.
And even if it's tested well I really don't see why I would want to pay upwards of $100 for a smoke/co detector, when I can get them for about $10. It's a device you buy and don't want to use, ever. I'd rather spend the money on routine checks on possible CO sources (oven, heater, ...).
I like my Nest thermostat, but I'm more inclined to add smoke detectors from Simplisafe to my security system. They're cheaper, and offer more of an insurance discount because they report to a central monitoring station.
I would've liked to see Nest go more towards home automation, or work with window AC manufacturers to integrate Nest controls on their boxes. I'm not too keen on Nest branded smoke detectors.
Another impressive product. And a clear demonstration that they want to be something more than a thermostat manufacturer. They are indeed becoming the Apple of household devices.
The thing that draws me to Nest is not the product value but the design. They are beautiful, well thought out products. I probably won't buy a Nest Protect, as my pain point isn't that high, but it's sexy as hell.
I found this line in The Verge's interview with Tony Fadell (Nest's CEO):
"And if the Protect senses a carbon monoxide problem, it’ll instruct the thermostat to shut off your furnace."
That is of utmost importance. That alone makes it by orders of magnitude the safest carbon monoxide detector made. The integration is going to make all the difference.
I want my future home to be setup with this stuff.
My only disappointment: It does not report back temperature to the Nest thermostat.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 390 ms ] threadHowever I would love to get one, along with the thermostat, should they ever come to the UK.
Why do you think this? It's been a huge win for me. I routinely forget to adjust my thermostat when I leave the house, even sometimes on out-of-town trips. You could argue that I'm just a dumb idiot -- OK, that's fine -- but this hasn't been a problem since I got a Nest. Add in the other (relatively minor) energy conservation features and the savings have been pretty big.
$129 is a lot for a consumer, especially without all the immediately tangible and potentially cost-saving benefits of the thermostat. But for a developer selling a condo, being able to advertise "Nest fixtures throughout" might be worth $1000.
I love my pair of Nest thermostats, but don't feel motivated to buy this.
Is it, really? I mean couples routinely blow that on 1-2 dinners out without any thought at all, at least in the demographic they're targeting. You're paying something like a 2x purchase cost for a much smarter, well-connected device – that seems well within the range that upscale consumers will pay for almost any sort of better made appliance or furnishing.
At $60 each I might replace the 5 I have in my house, at $130 I don't think so.
That said, it's hard to compare the base price without starting to talk about features: i.e. the cheaper detectors on sale around here tend not to have things like the LED needed to tell which of 5 alarms is currently going off. That part costs a few pennies but the pricing jump to get it much higher, at least for what was on offer at my local Home Depot last year when we replaced everything.
One thing that's interesting is that the video shows it uses photoelectric smoke detection. Most home systems use ionic detection, which is better for large particulates. When these sound, either the house is already on fire or you burnt the steak. Photoelectric detectors are better for detecting small particulates - the smoke before the fire - and they are less prone to false alarms.
Also, is the terminology not regulated? Their alert system seems to indicate that this would be a detector, not an alarm.
Other way around. Ionization detectors are more sensitive to small particles, while photoelectric detectors are more sensitive to large particles.
Large fires tend to burn "cleanly," producing smoke particles that are not too visible. While smoldering fires tend to produce lots of visible smoke -- the type that a photoelectric detector will identify.
https://www.firemarshals.org/rfsi/smokealarmfacts.html
[Slaps forehead.] I got the fire type / particle size reversed. The sad thing is I actually took the fire marshal's exam on the subject. But I guess, like in college, the moment I walked out of the exam room my mind became a clean slate.
Nest's marketing seems to target a wider range of people than that which I think would be interested in their products. I've worked in an Apple reseller, I've seen how much disposable income most people have, and Nest are massively over-targeting their products. These are for the guy who used to buy 2 iPods, in case one broke.
Sounds like you have awful smoke detectors.
They sell cheaper ones that have 10 year batteries.
I was really hoping that all the stuff on the ceiling would take advantage of the prime physical position there once it all became smarter. As it stands, I love what Nest is doing but I'm pretty underwhelmed by this. The motion sensor integration with the thermostat is a good start.
After thinking about it a bit I think that it'll never actually happen. It's a weird feature combination that would confuse non-geek consumers.
Who knows maybe Nest would want to reserve that kind of thing for another shiny new product to hang on your wall and could price at 150+
2 way phone calls by yelling at the smoke detector is probably a bit of a reach though, heh.
In addition, the improved awareness of when you're home, extra safety lighting, etc are all interesting as well. I don't see this as a smoke detector a step towards a smarter, safer, more energy efficient house. Perhaps the discussion should be about what else it is, not necessarily that takes on the main role of a extra fancy smoke/CO detector.
(Source: a friend who nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning)
GP is right, Carbon Monoxide falls to the bottom, so detecting there is of great essence. Carbon Dioxide floats, so its detectors should be placed up.
NOTE: I meant Smoke detectors.
The relevant specific gravities (higher == more dense): Carbon dioxide - CO2 1.5189 Carbon monoxide - CO 0.9667
Perhaps the CO is generally produced mixed with other more heavier gasses and is colder, thus less conveyant.
I can't find source but I found a pamphlet that mentioned that when in fire you shouldn't try to crawl on the floor for risk of CO poisoning, or something.
If you're in a fire, stay low and get out. Source: I'm a firefighter.
There's a different UI for combustion gas analyzers, most any HVAC guy owns one if he does furnace work. They're about an order of magnitude more expensive and the ratio of CO2/O2 tells you quite a bit about the level of draft (and they usually have a CO sensor too which only comes into play when draft/mixture is tremendously rich)
Low-O2 detectors are also common, and approach the problem from the other direction. They're more useful for N2 or other inert gases, since you're less concerned with toxicity and more with plain asphyxiation. IIRC they're used in some places to enforce "No riding in the same lift as the liquid-N2 dewar" safety rules.
Everything I've seen shows that it generally tends to mix with air or rise slightly due to its slightly less dense weight, and all the sources I found say you can either use the ceiling or wall.
http://www.ehow.com/way_5545497_proper-elevation-carbon-mono...
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21536403
(This came up in a previous discussion about the Nest smoke detector: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6441343 )
I wonder if anyone's sniffed their Nest's traffic to see if it's encrypted?
Now the spooks can watch you in your house! :)
Adequate smoke detectors can be purchased for $20. Is the minor increase in convenience really worth shelling out over 6 times that amount, possibly at the expense of safety?
(EDIT: as others have pointed out, this also serves as a carbon monoxide detector. The implication from the product page is that this product is designed to be placed on the ceiling. What could possibly go wrong?)
Especially when you have high ceilings, and the detector is the 120V AC kind and has no overly visible slot for a battery.
And it's incredibly annoying when you have to climb onto a chair/table/whathaveyou because your ceilings are so high you can't naturally reach it.
The one in my last apartment even had a big button in the middle. I thought I might be able to press it in order to turn off the alarm temporarily. That was not a good idea.
[A few years back our neighbouring apartment had a nasty fire - so I went out and bought a lot of fire alarms, fire blankets etc. - we weren't at much risk as our walls are about 1m thick sandstone. However, it did mean I ended up replacing all of the batteries in the "new" alarms at roughly the same time.]
See how that might be annoying in the middle of the night with high ceilings in the first place, and no replacement battery available?
Nest is trying to market the same way as Apple does, they appeal to Vanity through different directions. Expecting people in the market segment to feed off each other.
They've clearly found a problem (current alarms suck) and have made a solution. Just because you don't see the convenience doesn't mean other people don't, as is clear from the comments here. Once you get burned by regular smoke detectors in the middle of the night, you would pay good money for a product that actually fixes some of these issues.
http://artisanelectric.net/blog/the-big-picture/how-old-are-...
http://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/document-information...
No. I change the batteries once a year.
Or, you can pay $5 for a lithium battery that will last the life of the alarm. If it chirps, time to replace the smoke alarm.
(You did realize that smoke alarms should be replaced every ten years, right?)
Just make sure they're lithium, non-rechargeable batteries, with an expiration date about 8 years in the future.
Yeah, it's a bit pricey, but it's definitely better than the Thermostat for value and more within the price range I'd expect for a Nest device.
This however, will cost more than a comparable sensor for our simplisafe security system. It doesn't call into a central monitoring station, so I can't get the same insurance discount I do now. Nightlights are, imo, more or less of a solved problem, so I don't see that as really adding value.
It turns out it was the smoke detector's "self-destruct" chirp. A new battery wouldn't even do the job. Had to buy a new smoke detector because the old one had reached its age limit.
That night if you had asked me to pay $100 so that I could go back to sleep and not have to worry about THAT CHIRP, I would have whipped out my wallet so fast.
Then if you have high-ceilings it makes it much more difficult (have to go get a ladder in the middle of the night).
It will freak kids out, they're not fun to get back to bed.
The elderly or disabled might not be able to remove the battery or remove the alarm.
I'd say it's definitely a step in the right direction and in-line with Nests other product (probably much of the same hardware).
What's next for Nest? Lighting? Door locks? Security system?
Put in a lithium battery. The lithium battery will last for the entire 10-year life of the smoke alarm. Thus, you should only replace smoke alarms -- not the battery.
In fact, these days, they're selling smoke alarms with sealed non-replaceable lithium batteries. This prevents people from attempting to use an alarm past end-of-life, and thus getting a false sense of security.
The problem with a nanny state is eventually people rebel. The future of smoke detection is high profits for mfgrs and residents will spend an hour their first day in new premises disabling and disconnecting the devices. The overall effect on safety will be a profound net decrease, although theoretically on paper we'll never be safer.
Haven't given me any problems. Haven't heard about them giving anyone else any problems. You seem to be dismissing something that already has a proven track record. Why is that?
I see this as priced against monitoring services and systems that phone them.
Compared to those, this is cheap.
See, you say that, but it isn't just one smoke detector. It's ALL of them. My small house alone has no fewer than 4 plus a CO detector. That's $500, real money to save me from an occasional hour of lost sleep or, at worst, an extremely rare night? The value proposition just isn't there.
While I don't doubt that people out there will pay for both, let's not kid ourselves that it will be a mass-market product. The value proposition is way off.
Incidentally, if nothing else this announcement reminded my to order a replacement.
When we first moved in all the keypads said: "CALL 1-800-<WHATEVER> FOR SERVICE. NOT READY." We were not interested in a home-alarm service, so we simply left them alone and went about our move.
Fast forward 3 months: these alarm pads would start beeping in the middle of the night. We had a friend watching our house during the day: they'd _never_ beep during the day, not once. Around 1AM though they'd go off and starting chirping in 15 second intervals.
The first night: we were able to silence it by hitting "CANCEL" on the keypad. On subsequent nights we could silence it for [what seemed like] a random period of time between 15 minutes and several hours.
Perhaps it was just the sleep deprivation, but I swear by the fourth night you couldn't shut it up for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Fed up with the alarm: I headed downstairs, pajama-clad, with my multi-tool and a flash light.
---
Turns out: this is the "low battery alarm" -- we cut open the strongbox and disconnected a sealed lead acid battery and shut off the breaker. (Which coincidentally takes out our CO alarms, but it was worth it for the peaceful slumber.)
The battery did test bad so I disposed of it. (Shame: I wanted to repurpose it.)
It seems that these sorts of "self-destruct" alarms are DESIGNED to (A) go off when you're likely to be home (night-time hours) and (B) they are hard to ignore (e.g: exhibit some kind of non-deterministic pattern.)
Given how integrated it is into the BRINKs panel: it's doubtful the CO alarms would've even worked while the BRINKs panel was powered but unactivated.
Now we are left with keypads [we don't want] and deactivated CO alarms bolted in to our freshly painted walls. sigh
I'm not particularly annoyed by the behavior itself: false alarms don't bother me, and a low battery alert is definitely a useful "error code."
What bugs me is that it should be easy to dismiss the "low battery warning" for _at least_ 8 to 12 hour windows. Long enough that you can actually get some rest and deal with it in the morning / after your shift.
It costs maybe $20 for enough materials (not counting paint).
tl;dr: the battery, in this case, was in a room that is continuously controlled for humidity, temperature, and in this case: light.
--
The system usage should also be pretty static: as our house guest was home and presumably tripping the motion sensors all day. (Yes: even though the system was unarmed _and unactivated_, our motion sensors still appeared to be _sensing._ -- It's purely coincidence, but this ordeal started right around when the Internet was in an uproar over PRISM & the NSA.)
Retiring to our unprotected bedroom dwellings for the evening would've only _decreased_ the system's draw, if it had any impact at all.
Hopefully the innovative ideas that they are using for conveying that a battery is low or stopping the alarm from going off when cooking make it into other designs. Quite frankly I don't see the benefit added from networking my smoke detectors.
BUT, I do need a smoke detector that doesn't make me want to kill myself every time I interact with it - I already have printers for that. Here's hoping there's an easy way to completely disable all networking on these devices...
Many of the detectors that use a 9V battery backup have a poorly designed chamber holding the battery. Often the battery doesn't make good contact with the metal contacts inside the detector. This results in constant false positives that the battery is low. When it actually does run low, I'm forced to start this cycle over and over again of: find "new" battery, alarm still chirping, is the "new" battery really low or is it the battery chamber misaligned again, etc.
The dog loses another 3 months of her life from stress whenever this happens. I've never seen an animal so scared of a constant chirp.
So when these things start chirping at 2am, and I can't tell if the batteries in the drawer are brand new, instead of dealing with a scared dog, and possibly buying yet more new batteries, the detector comes off the ceiling and ends up in a drawer of blankets to dampen the noise as the chirping takes awhile to die after the detector is removed from power and battery removed.
Additionally, I help with many things around our condo association. I'm constantly changing batteries in these detectors. But first I need to find them. You hear a chirp that the battery is low, and now you have to find it somewhere. Maybe it's in the common hallways of 3 floors of units, or maybe it's a unit owner's. This involves me walking around the building trying to catch one in action of chirping.
I've been a loud detractor of Nest in the past because of their use of Facebook ads spamming my friend list, but I welcome an intelligently designed detector and am going to gladly spend the money to buy at least two of these and will hopefully get the condo association on these. The dog is going to be very happy. :)
With the nest and the text message, I would worry about the text number/account credentials getting stale/lost over time, and then when someone gets hurt in a fire there will be liability shenanigans.
You can generally hold down the test button to quickly drain the internal capacitance (sometimes with interesting audio effects).
This is probably not bad design. The smoke detector is trying to tell you something.
I don't see this as priced against a $20 smoke alarm. I see this as priced against a smoke system that phones a monitoring service so your home is protected while you are away. These systems are easily $60 - $100 per unit plus the base station plus a recurring fee ($45/month in my area).
Nest pricing is far cheaper than the combination of these, while giving you active remote monitoring peace of mind.
"Cares for your family as much as you do."
Appeal to parental guilt is a pretty powerful marketing tool.
Would have been ground-breaking if the Nest smoke detector was a $20 or $40 networked addon to the original Nest thermostat.
What are some other apps that can come from an always-on wifi-enabled set of sensors?
I lived in an apartment where we essentially had a broom handle hanging next to the alarm because it was inevitable, and during Sandy blackout the thing constantly chirped because its landline was disconnected. Not a good experience.
And even if it's tested well I really don't see why I would want to pay upwards of $100 for a smoke/co detector, when I can get them for about $10. It's a device you buy and don't want to use, ever. I'd rather spend the money on routine checks on possible CO sources (oven, heater, ...).
I would've liked to see Nest go more towards home automation, or work with window AC manufacturers to integrate Nest controls on their boxes. I'm not too keen on Nest branded smoke detectors.
"And if the Protect senses a carbon monoxide problem, it’ll instruct the thermostat to shut off your furnace."
That is of utmost importance. That alone makes it by orders of magnitude the safest carbon monoxide detector made. The integration is going to make all the difference.
I want my future home to be setup with this stuff.
My only disappointment: It does not report back temperature to the Nest thermostat.
Yet. I'd suspect this'll come eventually.