12 ms·

Nest Protect is a terrible buggy product

295 points by somerandomness 12y ago

oloboWd 12y ago
One experience like this would be enough to put me off of home automation for about 10 years. I think its unfortunate that Nest chose a target so fraught with safety implications for their second device. A lot could be done to ameliorate problems like this if the consequences of a false negative were not so catastrophic.
vinceguidry 12y ago
I'm going to buy a condo here in the next year, I plan on rolling my own automation with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. It's the only way to do it right.
- Grazester 12y ago
  You are going to build your own smoke and fire detector and "do it right"?
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    Where did you get "smoke and fire detector" from "rolling my own automation"? But I can just buy an off-the-shelf detector that actually gets its primary purpose right and hook into that.
    - woodman 12y ago
      > Where did you get "smoke and fire detector" from "rolling my own automation"? Most likely from the fact that you made that comment in a thread about a smoke detector...
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Apparently Nest can't, so why not try?
    - bicknergseng 12y ago
      Imminent danger of death? I want a Nest (that works, though this video is anecdotal and seems staged-ish) as much as the next person, but I have to silence a standard smoke detector once every never. It's inconvenient when I do, but less inconvenient than waking up to find my house is on fire or not waking up at all because I died in my sleep from carbon monoxide or smoke inhalation. Even if I trust my own build and code, do I trust the build/code quality of an arduino and whatever half assed, 3rd party smoke detecting shield I can find over a device designed and built by people with the life saving responsibility in mind? I'd still trust a Nest over any arduino shield. Being alive >>>>> rare inconvenience.
      - ashark 12y ago
        Personal risk aside, have fun trying to get your insurance money if something goes wrong, even if it's not the fault of your home-built fire detectors or Raspberry Pi thermostat or whatever. I'd be surprised if that didn't cause problems, should you have to make a claim they find out about your tinkering.
        CamperBob2 12y ago
        I'd be inclined to keep the minimum required complement of cheap detectors around, for just that reason.
        bicknergseng 12y ago
        I didn't even think of that... good point. Is this an issue with nest?
      - CamperBob2 12y ago
        The notion that this is an either-or situation, where a device must necessarily be prone to either false alarms or failure to alert during a true emergency, makes me hope that you (and most of the other posters in this thread) don't actually work for companies that make these things.
        12y ago
- Udo 12y ago
  Apparently HN takes a very dim view on people talking about rolling their own home automation - but as someone who's done it, I say: go for it! It's fun and as a hacker you'll have an easy time making something not achievable with consumer solutions. Within the context of the article, I think false positive in smoke detectors are always inevitable, and by law they can't be silenced. But what a smart home system could do is allow you to intercede and prevent the defective one from cascade-infecting every other device.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Apparently HN takes a very dim view on people talking about rolling their own home automation There used to be a very different crowd around here. I've been looking around for a site like what HN used to be, when "H" stood for "Hacker" and not "Helpless," but so far no good suggestions have come to light.
Terretta 12y ago
I run five of them, three powered and two battery. One of them "falsed" twice in one week about three months after installation, and not at all in the four months since. So I think it wasn't false, I think there was something triggering it. I've had zero other issues. Note these were all purchased before Nest turned off the waving, but have been updated with e firmware that ignores the wave. I also run nine of the original batch of thermostats with no issues, and any minor complaints (e.g. turning off heat when in direct sunlight) have all been addressed over the years of updates.
jms703 12y ago
I wonder if one if his neighbors is messing with his nest. Maybe someone has figured out a way to set off nest alarms.
brendanr 12y ago
Nest did a great job with their thermostat, but the Protect leaves a lot to be desired. I was vacuuming which triggered the sensor. The alarm went off, and it was really loud. I looked at how to hush it, and couldn't figure out how. My alarm was too high up to safely climb up and press the button -- I had paid for somebody to install it safely before. So I called their support, and they told me they couldn't legally add a feature to turn it off. Which is a bit bewildering, considering that wave-to-hush had been a launch feature (albeit removed for apparent reliability issues). So I had to dangerously climb up high and remove the alarm and take out the battery. But the worst thing? It never alerted my phone. I have my own theories about why this happened. I had recovered my iPhone and not logged back into the Nest app, which I think is required for notifications to start flowing again. But the support guy thought Nest engineering would be back in touch with me to discuss this crucial flaw within two weeks. Months later, I've not heard back. Nest had a ton of options after the thermostat. It feels like they put a smaller B team on the smoke detector, despite it being a critically important safety device. It's really bewildering how the Protect turned out this way. More generally, the lesson is that the Internet of Things is going to be fraught with complications.
- bgentry 12y ago
  Apparently "dirty" power is a major trigger for the wired Nest Protect's false alarms. It's not surprising that your vacuum cleaner was enough to trigger this. CloudFlare's CEO was ranting about his ~daily false alarms about 6 months ago: "dirty power common on PG&E SF causes small blips in light emitter. Nest interprets as smoke." More detail here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd
  - brendanr 12y ago
    Actually mine just runs on batteries. I think they have an optical sensor which can be triggered by dust. I was told by support that they used to recommend blowing the debris out, but it wasn't good for customer confidence.
    - 12y ago
jrockway 12y ago
I saw this last night and admit that I've watched the video a couple times. It's a fascinating view into what users are really doing with your product. <spoilers follow> And, I'm really impressed with the filmmaking skill exhibited in this short video. The transition between walking with the camera and setting it down to rip the smoke alarm off the ceiling is perfect, and the framing there is great. As the film proceeds, Brad's breathing becomes more apparent and faster, as the tension builds to a climax of automatons screaming "emergency" and "can't be hushed here, can't be hushed here hushed here". I also appreciate the exposure as Brad walks into the garage to find an improvised grave for his machine overlords; completely black, and out of the blackness comes an insulated water cooler, perfectly sized for the smoke alarms. Finally, I like how the anger, tension, and action escalates progressively through the film. It starts off with some walking around, and gradually becomes more violent. The timing is just perfect. Perhaps not intentional, but it's just so wonderful. This should be submitted to a film festival. It's the most fascinating "home video" I've seen in ages. (Edit to add one more thing: I think the real genius is the computerized voice, not quite speaking with casual American English rhythm, telling the user that they can't do the exact action they requested by physically pressing a button. Obviously, Stanley Kubrick beat Brad to the punch by a few years, but it still works. And this is real life, not fiction.)
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  I concur regarding the film. It almost has an atmosphere of a dystopian sci-fi. Can't say whether that reflects poorly or not on the early stages of the IoT.
  - jrockway 12y ago
    I think it's an uncanny valley thing. When your computer says "Compiler Error 42", it's acting like a machine, which is fine. When it starts saying "Emergency: this alarm can't be hushed here," then it starts getting human. I realize the Nest announcer might be a better GlaDOS than GlaDOS. (But not a better HAL than HAL.)
    - raldi 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
300bps 12y ago
You don't get a second chance with a product like this.
- tdicola 12y ago
  The problem is if you have too many false alarms people will rip the smoke detector down and disable it. There's a fine balance.
  - sk5t 12y ago
    I suspect 300bps means Nest doesn't get a second chance to produce a good smoke detector--not that the detector shouldn't be failsafe.
  - recursive 12y ago
    I assume he means the product doesn't get a second chance to make a consumer impression because any sane person will abandons the product after a mishap like this.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tdicola 12y ago
I don't think it's just Nests, I bought a First Alert smoke alarm a year ago and it just recently started giving me random false alarms. Battery is fine but something is setting it off (not fire or smoke, and yes it has both atomic and photoelectric sensors). I went searching for a good smoke alarm without lots of false alarm complaints and unfortunately every smoke alarm on Amazon has complaints about false alarms. I think in recent years manufacturers have become paranoid about missing an alarm and being sued so they probably default to fire the alarm if there's absolutely any potential reason, real or imagined, that a fire might be occuring.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Usually the culprit for lots of false alarms is an ionizing in the kitchen and poor placement.
  - tdicola 12y ago
    No these were false alarms at completely random times with no cooking, dusting, or other activity going on. A couple were late at night well after 2am and were pretty nerve rattling.
liyanage 12y ago
That's some harsh language directed at his coworkers...
- bradfitz 12y ago
  They can take it. Or they can build better products. I don't put on kid gloves when a product is this bad. I'm nicer when it's a beta or unreleased. But I paid $500 for these, for a final product. This is unacceptable.
raldi 12y ago
"If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by regulation." https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-silence https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-... (Yes, I know the smoke detection was a malfunction, but occasional malfunctions like that are a fact of life. My ire is directed at regulators forbidding users from silencing their own smoke detectors without physically incapacitating them -- what were they thinking!?)
- jrockway 12y ago
  It can be hushed if you stuff it into a cooler, apparently.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  They were thinking about protecting human life. For example, people with cheapskate landlords who would be happy to leave a nonfunctional smoke detector that was muted installed rather than spend $20.
  - raldi 12y ago
    I'm not saying you should be able to permanently mute them; just for, say, 15 minutes per button press. Also, cheapskate landlords would just take the battery out.
- brudgers 12y ago
  There's a reason that smoke detectors operate the way they do. That reason is that people die when they don't. The issue I have with the Nest smoke detector is that it is sold as a luxury consumer product. That puts it in the class of "the customer is always right" sales. The Venn diagram of that and things that are designed to save people's lives regardless of their tendency to statistically evaluate the risks and rewards of rare but deadly events inaccurately is disjoint. If Nest did not comply with the regulations, they could not market their product as a smoke alarm.
  - raldi 12y ago
ericfrederich 12y ago
Nobody mentioning the fact that he works for Google which owns Nest?
- tdicola 12y ago
  Does it matter?
- gk1 12y ago
  That's the point of his disclaimer: > "Disclaimer: I am a Google employee. I paid for these myself. So I speak as myself."
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  It's a post critical of his employers product, and he clearly mentions he's part of Google -- what is there to mention?
- alphakappa 12y ago
  If it's this Brad Fitzpatrick [1], he probably doesn't need to give a damn anymore. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick
TrainedMonkey 12y ago
As per twitter discussion problem seems to be with insufficiently filtered input power: https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168
- bradfitz 12y ago
  I now believe that conclusion to be false, after talking to more people.
  - engi_nerd 12y ago
    Can you share what you found?
    - bradfitz 12y ago
      I'll be sharing more but not yet. Still gathering information.
      - engi_nerd 12y ago
        Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
pimlottc 12y ago
"Can't be hushed here" I've never used Nest Protect so I was curious about this. Why is it location-dependent? The Nest site has some info[0]: Hushing works differently during an emergency. If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by regulation. However, you can hush the other Nest Protects in the house by pressing the button on the Nest Protect that detected the problem. So, when you press the Nest button on the Nest Protect in the bedroom, it will continue to alarm, but the Nest Protect in the living room will quiet down. We designed Nest Protect to hush this way so you can more easily communicate with other people in the house during an emergency while still being able to locate and address the source of the problem. 0: https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-silence https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-...
- raldi 12y ago
  The idea is supposed to be that if you accidentally told your basement smoke alarm that it was in the bedroom, you'd wake up hearing "Fire in the BEDROOM" and then you'd look around and see there's no fire in the bedroom and push the hush button and go back to sleep and meanwhile your basement is on fire. So networked smoke alarms require you to visit the one that's detecting the fire and disable it locally. Now, why they would ever make the regulations such that you can't temporarily silence the alarm, even when you're in direct physical contact with it, is beyond me.
  - bradfitz 12y ago
    And despite me silencing the master bedroom one, the other four didn't shut off. That's my major complaint.
  - pacala 12y ago
    There multiple persons under the same roof, sleeping at night. The alarm in the basement sounds. You go in there. There is a thick smoke. You disable the alarm. You inhale too much smoke and fall down. The house burns down and everyone dies. Of course, why on earth would you disable the alarm if indeed there is a ton of smoke is beyond me. But maybe there was a real-life case of somebody confused that did just that, and in the emotional aftermath regulation was passed to make sure this never happens again, common sense be damned.
jmenter 12y ago
I purchased a Nest thermostat and installed it as per the instructions. Set it to 69°F before going to sleep. I awoke at 3AM with the temperature at 83°F and no way to turn it off. I had to rip it from the wall. It was one of the most frustrating technology experiences I've had in years, and I'll have to see something REALLY compelling if I'm ever to try home automation again.
- engi_nerd 12y ago
  Nest pretty much says that you and I were doing it wrong. It worked just fine for heat -- although I later found out that every time it turned on my heat pump it was activating the emergency heat. I tried finding a way to get the unit to be okay with ramping up the temperature over a longer period of time, but that setting was not exposed in their UI. All I wanted was to say "I don't really care what temperature the house is while I'm gone so long as it never goes below 55F or above 80F, but I want you to make sure that when I arrive home at 6PM the temperature has reached the point I set". But...alas, the unit never figured that out. The "learning mode" never actually did anything, no matter what I tried. Fortunately I was able to get a full refund on the devices from Amazon.
  - ashark 12y ago
    I used to own a house equipped with a heat pump, and in heating mode the cheap-o thermostat would display "e heat". Maybe it's just common to use the same control circuit for that, that might otherwise be used for some sort of actual emergency heating device? It just said "heat" when the furnace was on.
    - engi_nerd 12y ago
      You have a point -- I don't know for sure, but my extremely high electricity bills (even during two relatively mild months) are my reason for believing that the Nest was activating the emergency heat. EDIT: corrected that whole last sentence. It made no sense.
      - deleted 12y ago
kennywinker 12y ago
I was a huge fan of the IDEA of the Nest Protect. The reality? Not so big a fan. I think they oversold it. It's still better than my old smoke detector in that the pre-alarm warning is fairly gentle, but I'm still getting on a chair to tap the "shut up" button. Wave-to-turn-off never worked for me even before they disabled it. My brother bought one, while I was still in the honeymoon period of mine. His false alarmed constantly, and has since been removed.
brandon272 12y ago
Wow, that's a lot of alarms! I've got a 3000 sqft. house and it's only got 3. I guess you can never be too safe.
- raldi 12y ago
  The current California fire code requires them all over the goddamn place.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  The video looked like a preview for a new game where you run around Hogwarts collecting smoke alarms in a bucket.
  - stock_toaster 12y ago
    Do you get extra points for finding the golden NEST?
Rapzid 12y ago
So this guy pretty much publicly admitted he knew his companies useless smoke alarm was going off at his home, but couldn't be bothered going home to sort it out? Poor neighbours indeed.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached.
- mholt 12y ago
  And Go's net/http package.
  - kentonv 12y ago
    And LiveJournal.
    - dsymonds 12y ago
      And Gearman.
      - vhost- 12y ago
        And OpenID.
    - suppressingfire 12y ago
      And protobuf. No, wait, that was someone else. :-)
      - bootload 12y ago
        "protobuf" https://twitter.com/KentonVarda https://twitter.com/KentonVarda
        kentonv 12y ago
        Now now, I didn't actually invent it, just rewrote and open sourced it... :)
        bootload 12y ago
Shivetya 12y ago
if meme, kill it with fire, wasn't more appropriate I don't when it would. I do not use the nest protect but have had the joys of interlinked fire alarms where one suffered a bad battery but all of them decided to complain about it. this was a wonderful video, wonder if its hit reddit yet. Silliness abounds there and its not the exposure you want your product to have. Reminds me of the story earlier today about smart homes
aerovistae 12y ago
Jesus how fucking big is that dude's apartment
- raldi 12y ago
  I'm gonna blow your mind here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House
  - aerovistae 12y ago
    I laughed
gibsonje 12y ago
I have multiple battery nest protects. I replaced "False alarm" alarms with them when my smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector had multiple 100% false alarms. The protects have not been activated by anything so far. The humidity that would set off my smoke detector before does not set off my protect. I've had no problems with my protects.
barney54 12y ago
I have a Nest thermostat and s Nest Protect. I'm s big fan of both. The Nest Protect has not been buggy for me. It has done the one thing I bought it for--not give us false alarms from the shower down the hall. Out previous smoke alarm would go off all the time from steam, but the Nest Protect hasn't. As the video shows, maybe we are just lucky!
metoosorta 12y ago
In other news, talented hacker Brad Fitzpatrick now available for hire.
- thesomelioma 12y ago
  Sorry, Google doesn't work that way. You're probably thinking of Apple.
  - aniket_ray 12y ago
    Not sure why you were downvoted as opposed to OP but this thread is full of people who don't realize that Google is truly a place where employees are encouraged to speak up when things are bad. Frankly, organizations would never be able to fix their mistakes if their employees are censured when they speak up.
    - divegeek 12y ago
      (Googler here) You're not wrong, but I think you overstate the case. I wouldn't say employees are encouraged to publicly trash the company's products. Not at all. But the company does respect employees' right to speak their mind in public, and it does encourage thoughtful internal dissent. I often tread pretty close to the line on what I say in public, and have even been reined in by Google legal counsel in a couple of cases. I found the experience of being told to cool it to be surprisingly affirming and liberating, and a powerful confirmation of the true commitment to openness in Google culture, because of the reasons for which it was done and the way in which it was done. Specifically, in both cases I really had crossed a line which could be potentially troublesome for Google in court, and in both cases the attorney who contacted me was respectful of my opinions and my rights to speak them to the point of being very apologetic about telling me to shut up. It was very clear to me that Google really didn't want to silence me, and did it only because they truly had to. I think that's awesome. Based on my experience, I have zero concern for Brad's job, and wouldn't be surprised if he gets some mild and unofficial kudos.
      - 12y ago
mrbill 12y ago
It seems like the majority of people who had problems with the Nest Thermostat in these comments had it hooked up to a heat pump system. Mine is a first-gen, bought the instant they were available to the public, and it's been rock-solid for the past 3+ years. However, I only have a standard central air and central heat (gas furnace) setup here in Texas. Nothing complicated. I've been debating the Protects myself, the battery operated ones.
- snsr 12y ago
  I've had a couple of battery-operated Nest Protects in the house for the past year or so - no problems or false alarms so far (thankfully no accidental fires either).
yoda_sl 12y ago
Here is my personal experience with Nest Products overall: - Own 3 thermostats: 1 at home and 2 at my wife Business - 6 Nest Protect spread in different part of our home (aka master bedroom, hallway, kitchen,...) The thermostats work fine and usually the only issues I have encountered were with Comcast or AT&T (wife Business) going down and the thermostat not every time able to reconnect automatically... Not a huge deal and overall happy with those. And checking our bills, over time I see some savings in electricity cost... And the big big plus is really being able to trigger the A/C during the summer hot days when our dogs are staying home, and we are not with them. The Protect overall have been working as expected with the one in the kitchen kicking in often when we are cooking (previous smoke detectors in the kitchen have been doing the same so no surprise). At installation time one of the unit couldn't register, and after reaching out to Customer support got a replacement unit quickly which worked fine. 3 weeks ago out of the blue the Nest Protect in our master bed room started to do exactly the same thing as shown in the video but the alarm after a minute will end and the app was reporting the level of smoke going down... Except there was never any smoke at all... Since it did happen 3 days in a row and on the third day, I was there to witness it, I tried a few things without luck... Ended up removing the battery and again contacted a Nest support (glad that I know a few folks there so I didn't have to go to any phone diagnosis), and 2 days later got a replacement unit. Installed since then and problem didn't happen and the bad unit was returned. My conclusion: the thermostat is almost rock solid except for flaky internet and doesn't always reconnect. The Protect are definitely more a v1 with still some glitch but still happy customer. I am not a huge fan that Google did acquire Nest and still have preferred Apple but I don't have too many complaints. I do have too a bunch of Dropcam and again not really happy that they ended under Google control, but their camera are good.
- rsync 12y ago
  Your thermostat should not require internet. Fact.
  - yoda_sl 12y ago
    It is only required when I used it remotely... Manual works even with internet down
Steko 12y ago
G-bots flagging it off the front page... that's HN for you.
- jrockway 12y ago
  Seems unlikely. The author is a Google employee and mentions it in the post.
  - akhilcacharya 12y ago
    Not just any Google employee either!
  - Steko 12y ago
    What is the alternate explanation of the points / time / rank then? And the upthread point about this being a Google employee seem to miss the actual content which is highly critical of Google. And there's absolutely a history of threads highly critical of Google getting flagged down on HN.
    - jrockway 12y ago
      I think there is a small faction of anti-Google readers on HN, and then a larger set of people that don't care one way or the other, taking each story at face value. I know there are quite a few of the anti-Google faction that follow me around on HN and try to drag me into arguments about Google in completely unrelated stories. That's why I don't comment much anymore. With that in mind, and given that HN's ranking algorithm is secret, it seems unfair to accuse a hivemind of intentionally messing with the algorithm to suppress commentary about their employer. Maybe it's a bug. Maybe it's working as intended. Could one of the HN admins comment? Do you guys notice a lot of Google-related stories getting flagged?
      - dang 12y ago
        > Do you guys notice a lot of Google-related stories getting flagged? Not particularly. Controversial stories reliably get lots of upvotes and flags. As far as I can tell, one could replace "Google" with "*" and the same statements would hold. I'm going to detach this subthread as off-topic now.
Sanddancer 12y ago
I'm wondering how much testing Nest did with the photoelectrics in the smoke detector. A teardown [1] seems to show a rather simple design for the led and photodiode beam path, as well as both of those components having places for light to potentially leak in around the diode bases. Other detectors [2], [3], seem to have much more complicated beam paths, with baffles and such, as well as better shielding to ensure the sensitive components are well-protected. Given this, I can see how all the differences in tolerances can lead to gaps which lead to lots of false alarms. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057 [2] http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/education/photoelectric_smoke_detector.png http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/educatio... [3] http://st-nso-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05_news_and_extras_1/product_news_1/06_productnews_fire_1/automatic_fire_detector_420_series_1/explodedview440.png http://st-nso-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05...
- raldi 12y ago
  > A teardown seems to show a rather simple design Don't you usually want lifesaving devices to have simple designs? For example, scuba breathing regulators are famously reliable in part because there's very little to them. Same goes for the AK-47, though I suppose I'm getting off the "lifesaving" track now...
  - fencepost 12y ago
    I don't want lifesaving devices to have simple designs, I want them to have designs sufficient and appropriate for the task at hand. "Reduced manufacturing cost by $0.25/unit" in a triple-digit-cost smoke detector is not something that I as a consumer care about.
    - raldi 12y ago
      My point is that sometimes, simplicity isn't about reducing manufacutring costs; it's about creating a better product.
  - Sanddancer 12y ago
milesf 12y ago
My guess is Portal 3 will have these everywhere, with GLaDOS repeatedly uttering "can't be hushed here".
- kubiiii 12y ago
  I was looking for a portal reference. Definitely reminds me of glados & stupid turrets.
cxseven 12y ago
There's a general pattern of trying to dumb things down to a simple, inflexible interface, too often with half-baked "AI" bolted on. Good products still need attentive human supervision. I installed Insteon motion detectors and webcams after a robbery, but the included software was such undependable and inflexible garbage that I replaced it all with a simple Misterhouse-based Perl script that sends texts via email. If I see another tech product ad aimed at millenials featuring bright easter colors and indiepop music pitched by Steve Jobs wannabes who are unable to get any angry nerds to make their products actually work, I might snap. By the way, the other HN article about dumb smart homes is a good accompaniment to this. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524 )
jmspring 12y ago
I continually come back to the thought that typical consumer software practices - be it games, apps, cloud services, etc - where you iterate quickly and don't always work out the bugs or design scales well to things like Nest protect, etc. For me, anything that ends up in a consumer home device should be solid from the time it is purchased and not require software updates to work right. This leads to another concern of mine -- are places like fb, apple, Google, etc. capable of creating stable v1 products for the home. With Nest, the initial thermostat seemed to work well. Original Dropcam works well. There have been questions since the acquisition of both companies.
- smoyer 12y ago
  I agree ... I was an embedded engineer for many years and we knew that once we released a product to production, it would kill the company if 100k of them in the field had to be replaced.
  - jmspring 12y ago
    One thing I've noticed with embedded code bases, some can be quite elegant and tight, have a level of fail safe/resiliency, etc. Some, reboot the device on error is your friend. It is always hard after spending time in larger systems going back to and doing some code archaeology to see if something that seems off is the right thing or just what it seems like -- needs cleaning up.
Animats 12y ago
If the smoke detector function is having false alarms, this should be reported to Underwriters Laboratories, the tech arm of the fire insurance industry. Here's the report form. http://ul.com/offerings/market-surveillance/ http://ul.com/offerings/market-surveillance/ The NEXT smoke detector has UL approval number UTGT.S25414. That means UL actually tested the thing. But they may not be testing adequately for electrical noise on the power side, because, until now, smoke detectors were simple electrically and insensitive to power problems. So report problems to UL. They take fire safety device failures very seriously.
moe 12y ago
I can not believe someone went out of their way to put a spoken "Can not be hushed" response into those things. Just what you need in a panic situation with a fire in your house; your smoke alarm playing the smart-ass, at 85 decibels.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Like others have pointed out, it cannot be hushed by law. So what is it supposed to do? Simply not reacting to the button press seems even worse to me.
tacojuan 12y ago
Hahaha, oh my god the last 2 minutes of that video is fucking hilarious. Looks like a mega64 skit.
Udik 12y ago
Not only the alarms refuse to shut down, they also keep calling him a masturbator?
hartator 12y ago
"unhushable pieces of crap" I won't be happy to make a check to an employee that speak of the company work this way.
- shoegumfoot 12y ago
  Perhaps it tells you something about how strongly the employee feels about the company's work that he is willing to say something like this in public. For such a big problem, firing the employee won't make it go away.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  The (sadly uncommon, but proper) fix for this isn't to silence the employee, but rather to fix the piece of crap you are selling so that it isn't a piece of crap anymore.
- 59nadir 12y ago
  > In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached. > And Go's net/http package. > And LiveJournal. > And Gearman. > And OpenID. Working at Google and having done these things, I don't think he has to worry about it. They weren't comp products either, since he spent his own money on them.

295 points by somerandomness 12y ago

One experience like this would be enough to put me off of home automation for about 10 years. I think its unfortunate that Nest chose a target so fraught with safety implications for their second device. A lot could be done to ameliorate problems like this if the consequences of a false negative were not so catastrophic.

vinceguidry 12y ago

I'm going to buy a condo here in the next year, I plan on rolling my own automation with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. It's the only way to do it right.

Grazester 12y ago
You are going to build your own smoke and fire detector and "do it right"?
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  Where did you get "smoke and fire detector" from "rolling my own automation"? But I can just buy an off-the-shelf detector that actually gets its primary purpose right and hook into that.
  - woodman 12y ago
    > Where did you get "smoke and fire detector" from "rolling my own automation"? Most likely from the fact that you made that comment in a thread about a smoke detector...
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Apparently Nest can't, so why not try?
  - bicknergseng 12y ago
    Imminent danger of death? I want a Nest (that works, though this video is anecdotal and seems staged-ish) as much as the next person, but I have to silence a standard smoke detector once every never. It's inconvenient when I do, but less inconvenient than waking up to find my house is on fire or not waking up at all because I died in my sleep from carbon monoxide or smoke inhalation. Even if I trust my own build and code, do I trust the build/code quality of an arduino and whatever half assed, 3rd party smoke detecting shield I can find over a device designed and built by people with the life saving responsibility in mind? I'd still trust a Nest over any arduino shield. Being alive >>>>> rare inconvenience.
    - ashark 12y ago
      Personal risk aside, have fun trying to get your insurance money if something goes wrong, even if it's not the fault of your home-built fire detectors or Raspberry Pi thermostat or whatever. I'd be surprised if that didn't cause problems, should you have to make a claim they find out about your tinkering.
      - CamperBob2 12y ago
        I'd be inclined to keep the minimum required complement of cheap detectors around, for just that reason.
      - bicknergseng 12y ago
        I didn't even think of that... good point. Is this an issue with nest?
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      The notion that this is an either-or situation, where a device must necessarily be prone to either false alarms or failure to alert during a true emergency, makes me hope that you (and most of the other posters in this thread) don't actually work for companies that make these things.
      - 12y ago
Udo 12y ago
Apparently HN takes a very dim view on people talking about rolling their own home automation - but as someone who's done it, I say: go for it! It's fun and as a hacker you'll have an easy time making something not achievable with consumer solutions. Within the context of the article, I think false positive in smoke detectors are always inevitable, and by law they can't be silenced. But what a smart home system could do is allow you to intercede and prevent the defective one from cascade-infecting every other device.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Apparently HN takes a very dim view on people talking about rolling their own home automation There used to be a very different crowd around here. I've been looking around for a site like what HN used to be, when "H" stood for "Hacker" and not "Helpless," but so far no good suggestions have come to light.

Terretta 12y ago

I run five of them, three powered and two battery. One of them "falsed" twice in one week about three months after installation, and not at all in the four months since. So I think it wasn't false, I think there was something triggering it. I've had zero other issues. Note these were all purchased before Nest turned off the waving, but have been updated with e firmware that ignores the wave. I also run nine of the original batch of thermostats with no issues, and any minor complaints (e.g. turning off heat when in direct sunlight) have all been addressed over the years of updates.

jms703 12y ago

I wonder if one if his neighbors is messing with his nest. Maybe someone has figured out a way to set off nest alarms.

brendanr 12y ago

Nest did a great job with their thermostat, but the Protect leaves a lot to be desired. I was vacuuming which triggered the sensor. The alarm went off, and it was really loud. I looked at how to hush it, and couldn't figure out how. My alarm was too high up to safely climb up and press the button -- I had paid for somebody to install it safely before. So I called their support, and they told me they couldn't legally add a feature to turn it off. Which is a bit bewildering, considering that wave-to-hush had been a launch feature (albeit removed for apparent reliability issues). So I had to dangerously climb up high and remove the alarm and take out the battery. But the worst thing? It never alerted my phone. I have my own theories about why this happened. I had recovered my iPhone and not logged back into the Nest app, which I think is required for notifications to start flowing again. But the support guy thought Nest engineering would be back in touch with me to discuss this crucial flaw within two weeks. Months later, I've not heard back. Nest had a ton of options after the thermostat. It feels like they put a smaller B team on the smoke detector, despite it being a critically important safety device. It's really bewildering how the Protect turned out this way. More generally, the lesson is that the Internet of Things is going to be fraught with complications.

bgentry 12y ago
Apparently "dirty" power is a major trigger for the wired Nest Protect's false alarms. It's not surprising that your vacuum cleaner was enough to trigger this. CloudFlare's CEO was ranting about his ~daily false alarms about 6 months ago: "dirty power common on PG&E SF causes small blips in light emitter. Nest interprets as smoke." More detail here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd
- brendanr 12y ago
  Actually mine just runs on batteries. I think they have an optical sensor which can be triggered by dust. I was told by support that they used to recommend blowing the debris out, but it wasn't good for customer confidence.
  - 12y ago

jrockway 12y ago

I saw this last night and admit that I've watched the video a couple times. It's a fascinating view into what users are really doing with your product. <spoilers follow> And, I'm really impressed with the filmmaking skill exhibited in this short video. The transition between walking with the camera and setting it down to rip the smoke alarm off the ceiling is perfect, and the framing there is great. As the film proceeds, Brad's breathing becomes more apparent and faster, as the tension builds to a climax of automatons screaming "emergency" and "can't be hushed here, can't be hushed here hushed here". I also appreciate the exposure as Brad walks into the garage to find an improvised grave for his machine overlords; completely black, and out of the blackness comes an insulated water cooler, perfectly sized for the smoke alarms. Finally, I like how the anger, tension, and action escalates progressively through the film. It starts off with some walking around, and gradually becomes more violent. The timing is just perfect. Perhaps not intentional, but it's just so wonderful. This should be submitted to a film festival. It's the most fascinating "home video" I've seen in ages. (Edit to add one more thing: I think the real genius is the computerized voice, not quite speaking with casual American English rhythm, telling the user that they can't do the exact action they requested by physically pressing a button. Obviously, Stanley Kubrick beat Brad to the punch by a few years, but it still works. And this is real life, not fiction.)

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
I concur regarding the film. It almost has an atmosphere of a dystopian sci-fi. Can't say whether that reflects poorly or not on the early stages of the IoT.
- jrockway 12y ago
  I think it's an uncanny valley thing. When your computer says "Compiler Error 42", it's acting like a machine, which is fine. When it starts saying "Emergency: this alarm can't be hushed here," then it starts getting human. I realize the Nest announcer might be a better GlaDOS than GlaDOS. (But not a better HAL than HAL.)
  - raldi 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

300bps 12y ago

You don't get a second chance with a product like this.

tdicola 12y ago
The problem is if you have too many false alarms people will rip the smoke detector down and disable it. There's a fine balance.
- sk5t 12y ago
  I suspect 300bps means Nest doesn't get a second chance to produce a good smoke detector--not that the detector shouldn't be failsafe.
- recursive 12y ago
  I assume he means the product doesn't get a second chance to make a consumer impression because any sane person will abandons the product after a mishap like this.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tdicola 12y ago

I don't think it's just Nests, I bought a First Alert smoke alarm a year ago and it just recently started giving me random false alarms. Battery is fine but something is setting it off (not fire or smoke, and yes it has both atomic and photoelectric sensors). I went searching for a good smoke alarm without lots of false alarm complaints and unfortunately every smoke alarm on Amazon has complaints about false alarms. I think in recent years manufacturers have become paranoid about missing an alarm and being sued so they probably default to fire the alarm if there's absolutely any potential reason, real or imagined, that a fire might be occuring.

Spooky23 12y ago
Usually the culprit for lots of false alarms is an ionizing in the kitchen and poor placement.
- tdicola 12y ago
  No these were false alarms at completely random times with no cooking, dusting, or other activity going on. A couple were late at night well after 2am and were pretty nerve rattling.

liyanage 12y ago

That's some harsh language directed at his coworkers...

bradfitz 12y ago
They can take it. Or they can build better products. I don't put on kid gloves when a product is this bad. I'm nicer when it's a beta or unreleased. But I paid $500 for these, for a final product. This is unacceptable.

raldi 12y ago

"If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by regulation." https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-silence https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-... (Yes, I know the smoke detection was a malfunction, but occasional malfunctions like that are a fact of life. My ire is directed at regulators forbidding users from silencing their own smoke detectors without physically incapacitating them -- what were they thinking!?)

jrockway 12y ago
It can be hushed if you stuff it into a cooler, apparently.
Spooky23 12y ago
They were thinking about protecting human life. For example, people with cheapskate landlords who would be happy to leave a nonfunctional smoke detector that was muted installed rather than spend $20.
- raldi 12y ago
  I'm not saying you should be able to permanently mute them; just for, say, 15 minutes per button press. Also, cheapskate landlords would just take the battery out.
brudgers 12y ago
There's a reason that smoke detectors operate the way they do. That reason is that people die when they don't. The issue I have with the Nest smoke detector is that it is sold as a luxury consumer product. That puts it in the class of "the customer is always right" sales. The Venn diagram of that and things that are designed to save people's lives regardless of their tendency to statistically evaluate the risks and rewards of rare but deadly events inaccurately is disjoint. If Nest did not comply with the regulations, they could not market their product as a smoke alarm.
- raldi 12y ago

ericfrederich 12y ago

Nobody mentioning the fact that he works for Google which owns Nest?

tdicola 12y ago
Does it matter?
gk1 12y ago
That's the point of his disclaimer: > "Disclaimer: I am a Google employee. I paid for these myself. So I speak as myself."
mmanfrin 12y ago
It's a post critical of his employers product, and he clearly mentions he's part of Google -- what is there to mention?
alphakappa 12y ago
If it's this Brad Fitzpatrick [1], he probably doesn't need to give a damn anymore. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick

TrainedMonkey 12y ago

As per twitter discussion problem seems to be with insufficiently filtered input power: https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168

bradfitz 12y ago
I now believe that conclusion to be false, after talking to more people.
- engi_nerd 12y ago
  Can you share what you found?
  - bradfitz 12y ago
    I'll be sharing more but not yet. Still gathering information.
    - engi_nerd 12y ago
      Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

pimlottc 12y ago

"Can't be hushed here" I've never used Nest Protect so I was curious about this. Why is it location-dependent? The Nest site has some info[0]: Hushing works differently during an emergency. If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by regulation. However, you can hush the other Nest Protects in the house by pressing the button on the Nest Protect that detected the problem. So, when you press the Nest button on the Nest Protect in the bedroom, it will continue to alarm, but the Nest Protect in the living room will quiet down. We designed Nest Protect to hush this way so you can more easily communicate with other people in the house during an emergency while still being able to locate and address the source of the problem. 0: https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-silence https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-...

raldi 12y ago
The idea is supposed to be that if you accidentally told your basement smoke alarm that it was in the bedroom, you'd wake up hearing "Fire in the BEDROOM" and then you'd look around and see there's no fire in the bedroom and push the hush button and go back to sleep and meanwhile your basement is on fire. So networked smoke alarms require you to visit the one that's detecting the fire and disable it locally. Now, why they would ever make the regulations such that you can't temporarily silence the alarm, even when you're in direct physical contact with it, is beyond me.
- bradfitz 12y ago
  And despite me silencing the master bedroom one, the other four didn't shut off. That's my major complaint.
- pacala 12y ago
  There multiple persons under the same roof, sleeping at night. The alarm in the basement sounds. You go in there. There is a thick smoke. You disable the alarm. You inhale too much smoke and fall down. The house burns down and everyone dies. Of course, why on earth would you disable the alarm if indeed there is a ton of smoke is beyond me. But maybe there was a real-life case of somebody confused that did just that, and in the emotional aftermath regulation was passed to make sure this never happens again, common sense be damned.

jmenter 12y ago

I purchased a Nest thermostat and installed it as per the instructions. Set it to 69°F before going to sleep. I awoke at 3AM with the temperature at 83°F and no way to turn it off. I had to rip it from the wall. It was one of the most frustrating technology experiences I've had in years, and I'll have to see something REALLY compelling if I'm ever to try home automation again.

engi_nerd 12y ago
Nest pretty much says that you and I were doing it wrong. It worked just fine for heat -- although I later found out that every time it turned on my heat pump it was activating the emergency heat. I tried finding a way to get the unit to be okay with ramping up the temperature over a longer period of time, but that setting was not exposed in their UI. All I wanted was to say "I don't really care what temperature the house is while I'm gone so long as it never goes below 55F or above 80F, but I want you to make sure that when I arrive home at 6PM the temperature has reached the point I set". But...alas, the unit never figured that out. The "learning mode" never actually did anything, no matter what I tried. Fortunately I was able to get a full refund on the devices from Amazon.
- ashark 12y ago
  I used to own a house equipped with a heat pump, and in heating mode the cheap-o thermostat would display "e heat". Maybe it's just common to use the same control circuit for that, that might otherwise be used for some sort of actual emergency heating device? It just said "heat" when the furnace was on.
  - engi_nerd 12y ago
    You have a point -- I don't know for sure, but my extremely high electricity bills (even during two relatively mild months) are my reason for believing that the Nest was activating the emergency heat. EDIT: corrected that whole last sentence. It made no sense.
    - deleted 12y ago

kennywinker 12y ago

I was a huge fan of the IDEA of the Nest Protect. The reality? Not so big a fan. I think they oversold it. It's still better than my old smoke detector in that the pre-alarm warning is fairly gentle, but I'm still getting on a chair to tap the "shut up" button. Wave-to-turn-off never worked for me even before they disabled it. My brother bought one, while I was still in the honeymoon period of mine. His false alarmed constantly, and has since been removed.

brandon272 12y ago

Wow, that's a lot of alarms! I've got a 3000 sqft. house and it's only got 3. I guess you can never be too safe.

raldi 12y ago
The current California fire code requires them all over the goddamn place.
CamperBob2 12y ago
The video looked like a preview for a new game where you run around Hogwarts collecting smoke alarms in a bucket.
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  Do you get extra points for finding the golden NEST?

Rapzid 12y ago

So this guy pretty much publicly admitted he knew his companies useless smoke alarm was going off at his home, but couldn't be bothered going home to sort it out? Poor neighbours indeed.

InclinedPlane 12y ago

In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached.

mholt 12y ago
And Go's net/http package.
- kentonv 12y ago
  And LiveJournal.
  - dsymonds 12y ago
    And Gearman.
    - vhost- 12y ago
      And OpenID.
  - suppressingfire 12y ago
    And protobuf. No, wait, that was someone else. :-)
    - bootload 12y ago
      "protobuf" https://twitter.com/KentonVarda https://twitter.com/KentonVarda
      - kentonv 12y ago
        Now now, I didn't actually invent it, just rewrote and open sourced it... :)
        bootload 12y ago

Shivetya 12y ago

if meme, kill it with fire, wasn't more appropriate I don't when it would. I do not use the nest protect but have had the joys of interlinked fire alarms where one suffered a bad battery but all of them decided to complain about it. this was a wonderful video, wonder if its hit reddit yet. Silliness abounds there and its not the exposure you want your product to have. Reminds me of the story earlier today about smart homes

aerovistae 12y ago

Jesus how fucking big is that dude's apartment

raldi 12y ago
I'm gonna blow your mind here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House
- aerovistae 12y ago
  I laughed

gibsonje 12y ago

I have multiple battery nest protects. I replaced "False alarm" alarms with them when my smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector had multiple 100% false alarms. The protects have not been activated by anything so far. The humidity that would set off my smoke detector before does not set off my protect. I've had no problems with my protects.

barney54 12y ago

I have a Nest thermostat and s Nest Protect. I'm s big fan of both. The Nest Protect has not been buggy for me. It has done the one thing I bought it for--not give us false alarms from the shower down the hall. Out previous smoke alarm would go off all the time from steam, but the Nest Protect hasn't. As the video shows, maybe we are just lucky!

metoosorta 12y ago

In other news, talented hacker Brad Fitzpatrick now available for hire.

thesomelioma 12y ago
Sorry, Google doesn't work that way. You're probably thinking of Apple.
- aniket_ray 12y ago
  Not sure why you were downvoted as opposed to OP but this thread is full of people who don't realize that Google is truly a place where employees are encouraged to speak up when things are bad. Frankly, organizations would never be able to fix their mistakes if their employees are censured when they speak up.
  - divegeek 12y ago
    (Googler here) You're not wrong, but I think you overstate the case. I wouldn't say employees are encouraged to publicly trash the company's products. Not at all. But the company does respect employees' right to speak their mind in public, and it does encourage thoughtful internal dissent. I often tread pretty close to the line on what I say in public, and have even been reined in by Google legal counsel in a couple of cases. I found the experience of being told to cool it to be surprisingly affirming and liberating, and a powerful confirmation of the true commitment to openness in Google culture, because of the reasons for which it was done and the way in which it was done. Specifically, in both cases I really had crossed a line which could be potentially troublesome for Google in court, and in both cases the attorney who contacted me was respectful of my opinions and my rights to speak them to the point of being very apologetic about telling me to shut up. It was very clear to me that Google really didn't want to silence me, and did it only because they truly had to. I think that's awesome. Based on my experience, I have zero concern for Brad's job, and wouldn't be surprised if he gets some mild and unofficial kudos.
    - 12y ago

mrbill 12y ago

It seems like the majority of people who had problems with the Nest Thermostat in these comments had it hooked up to a heat pump system. Mine is a first-gen, bought the instant they were available to the public, and it's been rock-solid for the past 3+ years. However, I only have a standard central air and central heat (gas furnace) setup here in Texas. Nothing complicated. I've been debating the Protects myself, the battery operated ones.

snsr 12y ago
I've had a couple of battery-operated Nest Protects in the house for the past year or so - no problems or false alarms so far (thankfully no accidental fires either).

yoda_sl 12y ago

Here is my personal experience with Nest Products overall: - Own 3 thermostats: 1 at home and 2 at my wife Business - 6 Nest Protect spread in different part of our home (aka master bedroom, hallway, kitchen,...) The thermostats work fine and usually the only issues I have encountered were with Comcast or AT&T (wife Business) going down and the thermostat not every time able to reconnect automatically... Not a huge deal and overall happy with those. And checking our bills, over time I see some savings in electricity cost... And the big big plus is really being able to trigger the A/C during the summer hot days when our dogs are staying home, and we are not with them. The Protect overall have been working as expected with the one in the kitchen kicking in often when we are cooking (previous smoke detectors in the kitchen have been doing the same so no surprise). At installation time one of the unit couldn't register, and after reaching out to Customer support got a replacement unit quickly which worked fine. 3 weeks ago out of the blue the Nest Protect in our master bed room started to do exactly the same thing as shown in the video but the alarm after a minute will end and the app was reporting the level of smoke going down... Except there was never any smoke at all... Since it did happen 3 days in a row and on the third day, I was there to witness it, I tried a few things without luck... Ended up removing the battery and again contacted a Nest support (glad that I know a few folks there so I didn't have to go to any phone diagnosis), and 2 days later got a replacement unit. Installed since then and problem didn't happen and the bad unit was returned. My conclusion: the thermostat is almost rock solid except for flaky internet and doesn't always reconnect. The Protect are definitely more a v1 with still some glitch but still happy customer. I am not a huge fan that Google did acquire Nest and still have preferred Apple but I don't have too many complaints. I do have too a bunch of Dropcam and again not really happy that they ended under Google control, but their camera are good.

rsync 12y ago
Your thermostat should not require internet. Fact.
- yoda_sl 12y ago
  It is only required when I used it remotely... Manual works even with internet down

Steko 12y ago

G-bots flagging it off the front page... that's HN for you.

jrockway 12y ago
Seems unlikely. The author is a Google employee and mentions it in the post.
- akhilcacharya 12y ago
  Not just any Google employee either!
- Steko 12y ago
  What is the alternate explanation of the points / time / rank then? And the upthread point about this being a Google employee seem to miss the actual content which is highly critical of Google. And there's absolutely a history of threads highly critical of Google getting flagged down on HN.
  - jrockway 12y ago
    I think there is a small faction of anti-Google readers on HN, and then a larger set of people that don't care one way or the other, taking each story at face value. I know there are quite a few of the anti-Google faction that follow me around on HN and try to drag me into arguments about Google in completely unrelated stories. That's why I don't comment much anymore. With that in mind, and given that HN's ranking algorithm is secret, it seems unfair to accuse a hivemind of intentionally messing with the algorithm to suppress commentary about their employer. Maybe it's a bug. Maybe it's working as intended. Could one of the HN admins comment? Do you guys notice a lot of Google-related stories getting flagged?
    - dang 12y ago
      > Do you guys notice a lot of Google-related stories getting flagged? Not particularly. Controversial stories reliably get lots of upvotes and flags. As far as I can tell, one could replace "Google" with "*" and the same statements would hold. I'm going to detach this subthread as off-topic now.

Sanddancer 12y ago

I'm wondering how much testing Nest did with the photoelectrics in the smoke detector. A teardown [1] seems to show a rather simple design for the led and photodiode beam path, as well as both of those components having places for light to potentially leak in around the diode bases. Other detectors [2], [3], seem to have much more complicated beam paths, with baffles and such, as well as better shielding to ensure the sensitive components are well-protected. Given this, I can see how all the differences in tolerances can lead to gaps which lead to lots of false alarms. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057 [2] http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/education/photoelectric_smoke_detector.png http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/educatio... [3] http://st-nso-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05_news_and_extras_1/product_news_1/06_productnews_fire_1/automatic_fire_detector_420_series_1/explodedview440.png http://st-nso-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05...

raldi 12y ago
> A teardown seems to show a rather simple design Don't you usually want lifesaving devices to have simple designs? For example, scuba breathing regulators are famously reliable in part because there's very little to them. Same goes for the AK-47, though I suppose I'm getting off the "lifesaving" track now...
- fencepost 12y ago
  I don't want lifesaving devices to have simple designs, I want them to have designs sufficient and appropriate for the task at hand. "Reduced manufacturing cost by $0.25/unit" in a triple-digit-cost smoke detector is not something that I as a consumer care about.
  - raldi 12y ago
    My point is that sometimes, simplicity isn't about reducing manufacutring costs; it's about creating a better product.
- Sanddancer 12y ago

milesf 12y ago

My guess is Portal 3 will have these everywhere, with GLaDOS repeatedly uttering "can't be hushed here".

kubiiii 12y ago
I was looking for a portal reference. Definitely reminds me of glados & stupid turrets.

cxseven 12y ago

There's a general pattern of trying to dumb things down to a simple, inflexible interface, too often with half-baked "AI" bolted on. Good products still need attentive human supervision. I installed Insteon motion detectors and webcams after a robbery, but the included software was such undependable and inflexible garbage that I replaced it all with a simple Misterhouse-based Perl script that sends texts via email. If I see another tech product ad aimed at millenials featuring bright easter colors and indiepop music pitched by Steve Jobs wannabes who are unable to get any angry nerds to make their products actually work, I might snap. By the way, the other HN article about dumb smart homes is a good accompaniment to this. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524 )

jmspring 12y ago

I continually come back to the thought that typical consumer software practices - be it games, apps, cloud services, etc - where you iterate quickly and don't always work out the bugs or design scales well to things like Nest protect, etc. For me, anything that ends up in a consumer home device should be solid from the time it is purchased and not require software updates to work right. This leads to another concern of mine -- are places like fb, apple, Google, etc. capable of creating stable v1 products for the home. With Nest, the initial thermostat seemed to work well. Original Dropcam works well. There have been questions since the acquisition of both companies.

smoyer 12y ago
I agree ... I was an embedded engineer for many years and we knew that once we released a product to production, it would kill the company if 100k of them in the field had to be replaced.
- jmspring 12y ago
  One thing I've noticed with embedded code bases, some can be quite elegant and tight, have a level of fail safe/resiliency, etc. Some, reboot the device on error is your friend. It is always hard after spending time in larger systems going back to and doing some code archaeology to see if something that seems off is the right thing or just what it seems like -- needs cleaning up.

Animats 12y ago

If the smoke detector function is having false alarms, this should be reported to Underwriters Laboratories, the tech arm of the fire insurance industry. Here's the report form. http://ul.com/offerings/market-surveillance/ http://ul.com/offerings/market-surveillance/ The NEXT smoke detector has UL approval number UTGT.S25414. That means UL actually tested the thing. But they may not be testing adequately for electrical noise on the power side, because, until now, smoke detectors were simple electrically and insensitive to power problems. So report problems to UL. They take fire safety device failures very seriously.

moe 12y ago

I can not believe someone went out of their way to put a spoken "Can not be hushed" response into those things. Just what you need in a panic situation with a fire in your house; your smoke alarm playing the smart-ass, at 85 decibels.

icebraining 12y ago
Like others have pointed out, it cannot be hushed by law. So what is it supposed to do? Simply not reacting to the button press seems even worse to me.

tacojuan 12y ago

Hahaha, oh my god the last 2 minutes of that video is fucking hilarious. Looks like a mega64 skit.

Udik 12y ago

Not only the alarms refuse to shut down, they also keep calling him a masturbator?

hartator 12y ago

"unhushable pieces of crap" I won't be happy to make a check to an employee that speak of the company work this way.

shoegumfoot 12y ago
Perhaps it tells you something about how strongly the employee feels about the company's work that he is willing to say something like this in public. For such a big problem, firing the employee won't make it go away.
georgemcbay 12y ago
The (sadly uncommon, but proper) fix for this isn't to silence the employee, but rather to fix the piece of crap you are selling so that it isn't a piece of crap anymore.
59nadir 12y ago
> In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached. > And Go's net/http package. > And LiveJournal. > And Gearman. > And OpenID. Working at Google and having done these things, I don't think he has to worry about it. They weren't comp products either, since he spent his own money on them.