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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 annoya

• mynameisvlad 13y ago
  Have you ever had your smoke detector do the low battery chirp? Because I will easily pay 6 times more to never hear that godawful sound ever again. Especially when you have high ceilings, and the detector is the 120V AC kind and has no overly visible slot for a battery.
  • ruswick 13y ago
    I have. I identify the detector and the batteries. It's not particularly hard.
    • mynameisvlad 13y ago
      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.
  • arethuza 13y ago
    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.]
    • bcl 13y ago
      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.
      • arethuza 13y ago
        LOL Clearly I am not sensible enough to think of that elegant solution!
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    • mynameisvlad 13y ago
      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?
  • Shivetya 13y ago
    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.
    • mynameisvlad 13y ago
      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.
  • highace 13y ago
    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.
    • zwily 13y ago
      They should still have a battery backup.
    • joeshaw 13y ago
      In the US, current fire codes require that hardwired smoke detectors also have a battery backup. http://artisanelectric.net/blog/the-big-picture/how-old-are-your-smoke-detectors-when-was-the-last-time-you-tested-them/ http://artisanelectric.net/blog/the-big-picture/how-old-are-... http://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/document-information-pages?mode=code&code=72 http://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/document-information...
  • DanBC 13y ago
    > Have you ever had your smoke detector do the low battery chirp? No. I change the batteries once a year.
  • tanzam75 13y ago
    > Have you ever had your smoke detector do the low battery chirp? Because I will easily pay 6 times more to never hear that godawful sound ever again. 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?)
    • the_cat_kittles 13y ago
      whoa- any particular battery brand that works the best?
      • tanzam75 13y ago
        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.
• timdorr 13y ago
  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.
  • blktiger 13y ago
    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.
    • FireBeyond 13y ago
      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.
  • ubercore 13y ago
    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.
• WillyF 13y ago
  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.
  • ruswick 13y ago
    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.
    • JohnTHaller 13y ago
      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.
      • WillyF 13y ago
        My wife lost just as much sleep, and she makes more than I do.
      • cjrp 13y ago
        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?
    • dm2 13y ago
• nate 13y ago
  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. :)
  • foobarian 13y ago
    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.
    • WillyF 13y ago
      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.
• Gipetto 13y ago
  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?
• tonylemesmer 13y ago
  You are correct in all your statements, however this will be a successful product, so everyone's happy :)
• zyb09 13y ago
  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.
• Terretta 13y ago
  I noted this deeper, but will post it up here: 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.
• smackfu 13y ago
  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.
• tommorris 13y ago
  Ah, but look at the marketing. "Cares for your family as much as you do." Appeal to parental guilt is a pretty powerful marketing tool.