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Some things are fine just being "dumb" products. Smoke alarms have worked (well, too!) for years long before Nest arrived, adding likely thousands of lines of c
by cddotdotslash 11y ago
Some things are fine just being "dumb" products. Smoke alarms have worked (well, too!) for years long before Nest arrived, adding likely thousands of lines of code to a device that literally only has to beep when it detects smoke or CO.
I have a $20 hunk of plastic on my ceiling. It beeps when it detects smoke, stops when I press the button, and requires battery changes once or twice a year. It doesn't have a smart phone app, wake me up in the middle of the night unnecessarily , cost $100, or add a ridiculous amount of complexity.
- agumonkey 11y agoThis wave of disruption is getting long.
- mkozlows 11y agoI have a $20 hunk of plastic on my ceiling too. It beeps whenever I cook a bunch of things, won't stop until I get out the stepladder and literally press a button on it, and when it needs a new battery it helpfully lets me know by beeping just infrequently enough that I can't tell if I'm imagining the beep, or tell which smoke detector it's coming from. The Nest seems like overkill to me, but let's not pretend that old-fashioned smoke detectors are some kind of awesomely perfected tech.
- dandanisaur 11y agoI disagree, these 'dumb' smoke detectors are spot on. Learning to cook, ceiling height regulations and hallucinating aren't problems a smoke detector is trying to solve. Also, if it beeps when there is smoke (from your cooking), it is doing it's intended job. Fires from cooking (2013) take up nearly 50%!! of residential building fires. SEE: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/ http://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/
- skynetv2 11y agoits doing its job. not being able to cook without burning stuff is not its problem. you will thank it when you leave stuff on the stove and it stops you from burning down the house
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Bluestrike2 11y agoDumb smoke + CO detectors aren't going anywhere, but neither are smart ones. Networking the devices together is a huge boon in larger homes where a few closed doors and space can make an alarm less likely to be heard (such as when you're sleeping, and it's even worse if you're a heavy sleeper). They'll improve with future generations and the price will continue to fall. They'll still cost more than the hunks of plastic, but that's OK: consumers can decide for themselves whether the increased cost is worth it for them.
- Houshalter 11y agoI had a "smart" smoke detector that's older than nest. It would connect to other smoke detectors, and tell you "there is a fire in the garage". Or any other room or building. Which you wouldn't get from a regular smoke detector. It's not really for residential use, but there are definitely use cases for remote smoke detectors.
- ryandvm 11y agoNest's primary strategy with the Protect was never to improve the user experience of the smoke/CO detector. Like you said, they are devices that you ideally have zero interaction with until the day they are required - at which point they mustn't fail. The whole point of the Protect was to get a speaker, microphone and some sensors in every room in a house. It's an obvious requirement for any company with ambitions of winning the connected home. Tweaking lights and thermostat settings from your phone is clearly a stopgap solution. The endgame here is Star Trek style interaction: "Computer - turn the AC down a few degrees." It was a brilliant ploy and would have worked perfectly except they flubbed the core functionality with various bugs. Normally, that's not a big deal with consumer electronics, but the market is very unforgiving when safety products fail.