Not waving, but choking. Many comments seem to be cutting more slack to this announcement than perhaps they would for other companies' products.
Nest says they discovered this for themselves, which indicates that there is some measurable effect and it came up on post-release testing, months after release. Even though some people had been discussing a potential for exactly this scenario when the product features were first announced.
Given this not unexpected error condition, Nest really should have run those same tests before releasing a product whose sole function is safety.
Yea, just like the 4 recalls for my Honda Fit. They should have totally tested all those aspects before. And since I'm only paying $100 compared to the $20K for the fit, I should expect better safety measures than the automobile industry. Because the number of people that die in house fires is minuscule to the number of people who die in automobile accidents.
>One of the most common things you see when a smoke alarm goes off is people waving their hands, towels or magazines to air out the room. With Nest Wave, that instinctive motion will actually silence the alarm.
A person's natural response to the first sign of danger might silence the alarm, inadvertently, and lead them to believe that they are safe. That is troubling.
However, they have thought about this problem:
>Depending on the situation, you may need to wave more at Nest Protect in order to silence it: Non-emergency situations require less waving, such as cancelling a manual test or listening to a Nightly Promise message. For your safety, you’ll have to wave more at Nest Protect during a Heads-Up or an Emergency Alarm. This helps ensure that you are deliberately trying to silence an alert.
Obviously, the liability load on this product is far more than most other gadgets. I guess that even though they anticipated this sort of issue, a paranoid level of caution is required from Nest
(Makes me think of the attention that Tesla received over one or two battery fires, or that bitcoin receives over company failures. New products are held to much higher standards than 'traditional' products)
It’s very important that you immediately connect your Nest Protect to your Nest Account so we can remotely disable Nest Wave.
Does anyone else find that unsettlingly creepy? If they can disable some feature of their product remotely, presumably via firmware updates or a similar mechanism, isn't it not much of a stretch to assume they can disable the entire alarm remotely?
And then they can get your Android phone to overheat and start a fire! Or slow down your car remotely when the police are chasing you!
Yup, that's the 21st century for you. Most of the cool things we have today are here thanks to being able to be controlled remotely over the Internet. I wouldn't be surprised if the next product Nest comes out with is a security system. ADT has had its run of shitty and insecure systems for too long. It is time for someone to create a better version where you can monitor everything remotely. This will have all the same ramifications: the manufacturer can lock you inside your own home.
The feature I really want in a smoke alarm is a "snooze" button which I can pre-register. I don't have a good fume hood over my kitchen stove, and the smoke detector is essentially in the kitchen (it's an open kitchen/living room), and the smoke alarm is on the kitchen side of the living room).
I want a way to easily hit a button prior to cooking and not have any smoke alarm (but maybe a CO alarm still) for the next 15-30 minutes. As long as I'm still in the kitchen cooking, I don't need the smoke alarm to tell me if there's a fire.
On the other hand, it's also entirely likely someone could step out of the kitchen for a few minutes, kitchen could catch fire, and bad stuff would ensue if the alarm were disabled.
One option might be a pre-alarm for 5-10 seconds, during which you can snooze it. Unfortunately, if anyone ever died in a fire where 5-10 seconds might have made a difference, massive liability would ensue.
The right solution is to move somewhere with a proper high-flow external-venting hood, of course, and only heat/CO alarms in the kitchen area.
First, I'll preface this that I'm an engineer for a smoke alarm company, so I may be a bit biased. The simple answer is that the rules forbid a smoke alarm feature like you (and many others) would like. Fortunately, if you switch to a photoelectric alarm in a proper location, you should not get false alarms from cooking.
Now here's the long answer:
Essentially all smoke alarms in the United States are tested and listed to UL217, which has specific requirements and restrictions for smoke alarms. UL217, Section 7 discusses alarm silencing means. Among many other things, it says
"It is not prohibited that each single and multiple station smoke alarm be provided with an automatically resettable alarm silencing means that has a fixed or variable time setting which desensitizes the alarm for a maximum of 15 minutes. Alarm silencing shall not disable the smoke alarm. Sensitivity shall not be reduced to more than 4 percent per foot of obscuration."
So we're only allowed to slightly desensitize the alarm for up to 15 minutes; never disable it.
Fortunately, the whole problem is moot if you switch to a photoelectric alarm (around $25) instead of an ionization alarm (<$10). Ionization alarms will false alarm from cooking byproducts far too quickly; photoelectric alarm generally do not. You also should not place a smoke alarm in the kitchen (this is a perfect location for heat alarms).
While ionization alarms will go off far too quickly from cooking, they also fail to response to slow smoldering fires. There are many videos of rooms and test boxes filled with smoke that fail to trigger an ionization alarm, while the photoelectric alarm is working fine. Some states have even outlawed ionization alarms.
Buy a decent photoelectric alarm with a 10-year battery, like the ones made by First Alert or Kidde, and you probably won't have to worry about your smoke alarms for 10 years. That's even better than Nest that needs to be thrown away after 7 years.
I don't work for any of the companies mentioned above either...
When I first red the snooze idea I thought the UL guidelines would say that it is not kosher but from a quick scan it looks like a "presnooze" button might be acceptable.
I thought about this for a bit. Best solution i came up with would involve sensing the room a person is in and deactivating it locally, but even then there's the "edge case" of a fire happening "behind your back" (e.g. in a closed stove) and you don't notice. Basically, even though the possibility of a fire going unnoticed will become increasingly small, the cost if it does happen is so high that IMHO it doesn't balance the amortized cost of having to deal with an annoying fire alarm. (unless that serves to "train" you to ignore/disable it... This may actually be an interesting behavioral question)
Why spend time developing a feature when the solution (moving it to a different position in the room) is relatively simple and also safer? How many people are going to hit snooze and then be called away for something and not get alerted when their kitchen catches fire?
Great response from Nest. But honestly - their algorithmic "trust us, the device knows what its doing" approach has always made me uncomfortable. The thermostat for instance - I don't want my thermostat to learn my habits and predict what temperature I want, etc. I just want to tell it what temperature the house should be and when, and leave it the hell alone.
Same thing with the smoke detector. False positive? Push the button. Its the rational ux given the criticality of failure modes involved.
I was under the impression that the Nest did work the way you would like— you tell it a temperature and thats it. The only "learning" involved was noticing you were gone and letting the temperature change a bit more, and when you come home it goes back to what you set. (There's also some bit about reducing the temperature a bit during peak load).
As with a smoke detector, I would never expect it to disable its smoke detecting function unless I pressed some button.
Oftentimes, recalls or other safety notices do not adequately spell out specific issues, merely allude to a vague "safety issue." Transparency is good.
> we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to
> question whether the Nest Wave could be unintentionally activated.
You think that counts as "spelling out specific issues"? That is not very transparent to me. Compare Nest's "specifics" with cperciva's response to a security bug in tarsnap:
What a mess. My existing CO and smoke detectors don't need a patch.
As per my comment yesterday on Nest's thermostat, this product doesn't need to exist. To have it proven as dangerous suggests that they have their priorities wrong here. I don't want poorly engineered toys keeping me safe.
As for the press statement, it's wriggling nothing more.
Their products remind me of Zorg's desk in the Fifth Element.
I know some engineers who design life critical safety systems for a living, and they all said something like this was going to happen when this product first came out. The example one of them gave was it was like a AED that could also let you recharge your phone, a moderately worthless feature that could only ever cause the failure of critical components.
It does, the light ring changes to indicate you're seen by the Nest Protect and when you wave to silence a smoke alarm the Nest Protect says "Smoke alarm hushed."
There's a fine line between too sensitive and not sensitive enough.
If I burn something while cooking I do NOT want the smoke detector to go off (it's loud), and the Wave feature takes 3 or 4 seconds before it registers.
Plus there are a lot of configurations to account for. Some people put the units on the walls while others on the ceiling. The Nest has to guess how far away people are when the walk by and how far people will be when they wave. Putting them on the ceiling with 10+ foot ceilings verses putting one on the wall in a small hallway will require different sensitivities for the Wave feature.
If you have multiple Nest Protects then they will all go off when one detects smoke or carbon monoxide, so the Wave bug won't matter too much.
The movement of smoke can trigger motion sensors. I believe they tried to account for this by also using a heat sensor, but if the smoke from the fire was within the threshold for "body heat" it could falsely assume a person is waving at it.
Funny, when I first read about the Nest Protect, my thought was that the Wave feature could be dangerous if it was unintentionally activated. I figured they would have really tested it to make sure that couldn't happen, but I still wasn't comfortable with the feature in general.
I'm searching for a combination of "totally normal" smoke detectors (for safety) and a possibility to trigger an additional remote alert on my mobile phone. Is there some arduino project for something like that?
Kind of awesome that this will, at least temporarily, be addressed via a software update assuming that you're nest is connected to a nest account via wifi. Puts me at ease.
Not directly related to this issue, but I'm skeptical about the Nest Protect in general. It includes a CO detector, but CO is a denser-than-air gas, so stays near the floor while the Protect is mounted on the ceiling to detect smoke. Also, most CO detectors need to be replaced every few years because it wears out. Does this mean you have to buy a new $300 Nest Protect every 5 years?
I have a Nest Thermostat that I love, but the Nest Protect doesn't seem nearly as cool or useful...
> CO is a denser-than-air gas, so stays near the floor while the Protect is mounted on the ceiling to detect smoke
Research on this topic seems to indicate that CO dissipates pretty evenly:
"Contrary to a significant amount of public opinion, CO did not layer on the floor, float at the middle of the chamber, or rise to the top. In each case, the levels of CO equalized throughout the test chamber. It took longer to equalize when CO was infused at the top of the chamber than the bottom, but levels always became identical with time."
CO is about the same density as air, but it will rise with warm air. Placing CO detectors on the ceiling is allowed by the NFPA.
Nest protect costs $130 and yes you're expected to replace it after 7 years. It's actually a legal requirement to replace CO detectors after 7 years in many jurisdictions.
The primary gas in the atmosphere is nitrogen, N2 with a molecular weight of 28. The second most prevalent gas is oxygen, 02 with atomic weight 32.
Carbon monoxide, CO at 28 is the same molecular weight as Nitrogen and therefore it diffuses similarly. This is part of what makes it so serious a hazard.
carbon monoxide is less dense than air - according to wikipedia, density at room temperature is 1.15 kg/m³ for CO vs 1.275 kg/m³ for dry air.
The nest protect retails for US$129.00 and has a service lifetime of 7 years.
I recently checked all the smoke detectors at my parents house and found that they were all well past their 10-year replace-by date. (I replaced them, but not with Nest smoke detectors).
The CO sensor in Nest is designed to last 7 years. The Nest has a built in timer that will start chirping after 7 years, forcing you to throw it away.
Most modern CO alarms last 10 years. Nest chose the smaller sensor, which dies sooner. Very poor decision on their part.
For more detail:
Nest uses a CO sensor by Figaro, TGS5342. This is a smaller version of Figaro's TGS5042. The CO sensor is filled with a water reservoir, with some air inlets to let gas enter. Over several years, the water evaporates out of those air inlets and the sensor dies.
Nest's smaller sensor has as smaller water reservoir, which means it doesn't last as long as the other alarms with a larger reservoir. First Alert uses the larger TGS5042 sensor, therefore it lasts longer. Kidde uses their own sensor, which also lasts 10 years.
That is very true. I have one of those older CO detectors and the instructions say it should be about a half a foot from the floor. I have no idea why the Nest CO detector wants it mounted 10 feet from the floor. Seems useless.
[+] [-] lovemenot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulbaumgart|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tensenki|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greatsuccess|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] FatalLogic|12 years ago|reply
http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Nest-Wave-and-how-do...
>One of the most common things you see when a smoke alarm goes off is people waving their hands, towels or magazines to air out the room. With Nest Wave, that instinctive motion will actually silence the alarm.
A person's natural response to the first sign of danger might silence the alarm, inadvertently, and lead them to believe that they are safe. That is troubling.
However, they have thought about this problem:
>Depending on the situation, you may need to wave more at Nest Protect in order to silence it: Non-emergency situations require less waving, such as cancelling a manual test or listening to a Nightly Promise message. For your safety, you’ll have to wave more at Nest Protect during a Heads-Up or an Emergency Alarm. This helps ensure that you are deliberately trying to silence an alert.
Obviously, the liability load on this product is far more than most other gadgets. I guess that even though they anticipated this sort of issue, a paranoid level of caution is required from Nest
(Makes me think of the attention that Tesla received over one or two battery fires, or that bitcoin receives over company failures. New products are held to much higher standards than 'traditional' products)
[+] [-] userbinator|12 years ago|reply
Does anyone else find that unsettlingly creepy? If they can disable some feature of their product remotely, presumably via firmware updates or a similar mechanism, isn't it not much of a stretch to assume they can disable the entire alarm remotely?
[+] [-] IgorPartola|12 years ago|reply
Yup, that's the 21st century for you. Most of the cool things we have today are here thanks to being able to be controlled remotely over the Internet. I wouldn't be surprised if the next product Nest comes out with is a security system. ADT has had its run of shitty and insecure systems for too long. It is time for someone to create a better version where you can monitor everything remotely. This will have all the same ramifications: the manufacturer can lock you inside your own home.
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
I want a way to easily hit a button prior to cooking and not have any smoke alarm (but maybe a CO alarm still) for the next 15-30 minutes. As long as I'm still in the kitchen cooking, I don't need the smoke alarm to tell me if there's a fire.
On the other hand, it's also entirely likely someone could step out of the kitchen for a few minutes, kitchen could catch fire, and bad stuff would ensue if the alarm were disabled.
One option might be a pre-alarm for 5-10 seconds, during which you can snooze it. Unfortunately, if anyone ever died in a fire where 5-10 seconds might have made a difference, massive liability would ensue.
The right solution is to move somewhere with a proper high-flow external-venting hood, of course, and only heat/CO alarms in the kitchen area.
[+] [-] CCengineer|12 years ago|reply
Now here's the long answer: Essentially all smoke alarms in the United States are tested and listed to UL217, which has specific requirements and restrictions for smoke alarms. UL217, Section 7 discusses alarm silencing means. Among many other things, it says
"It is not prohibited that each single and multiple station smoke alarm be provided with an automatically resettable alarm silencing means that has a fixed or variable time setting which desensitizes the alarm for a maximum of 15 minutes. Alarm silencing shall not disable the smoke alarm. Sensitivity shall not be reduced to more than 4 percent per foot of obscuration."
So we're only allowed to slightly desensitize the alarm for up to 15 minutes; never disable it.
Fortunately, the whole problem is moot if you switch to a photoelectric alarm (around $25) instead of an ionization alarm (<$10). Ionization alarms will false alarm from cooking byproducts far too quickly; photoelectric alarm generally do not. You also should not place a smoke alarm in the kitchen (this is a perfect location for heat alarms).
While ionization alarms will go off far too quickly from cooking, they also fail to response to slow smoldering fires. There are many videos of rooms and test boxes filled with smoke that fail to trigger an ionization alarm, while the photoelectric alarm is working fine. Some states have even outlawed ionization alarms.
Buy a decent photoelectric alarm with a 10-year battery, like the ones made by First Alert or Kidde, and you probably won't have to worry about your smoke alarms for 10 years. That's even better than Nest that needs to be thrown away after 7 years.
I don't work for any of the companies mentioned above either...
[+] [-] dfc|12 years ago|reply
UL 217 Smoke Alarms: https://ia600608.us.archive.org/3/items/gov.law.ul.217.1993/...
Carl Malamud is fighting the good fight. Without resource.org that doc would set you back $400-900.
CAVEAT: That is the 1993 edition. It looks like there is a 2005 update.
[+] [-] existencebox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfall|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techwatching|12 years ago|reply
Same thing with the smoke detector. False positive? Push the button. Its the rational ux given the criticality of failure modes involved.
[+] [-] jsumrall|12 years ago|reply
As with a smoke detector, I would never expect it to disable its smoke detecting function unless I pressed some button.
[+] [-] erichurkman|12 years ago|reply
Oftentimes, recalls or other safety notices do not adequately spell out specific issues, merely allude to a vague "safety issue." Transparency is good.
[+] [-] dfc|12 years ago|reply
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-...
[+] [-] bananas|12 years ago|reply
As per my comment yesterday on Nest's thermostat, this product doesn't need to exist. To have it proven as dangerous suggests that they have their priorities wrong here. I don't want poorly engineered toys keeping me safe.
As for the press statement, it's wriggling nothing more.
Their products remind me of Zorg's desk in the Fifth Element.
[+] [-] koenigdavidmj|12 years ago|reply
Wave seems like the type of feature that should probably have some audio/light indication that it was invoked, though.
Between this and Google, though, remind me never to name a product or feature Wave.
[+] [-] dsl|12 years ago|reply
I know some engineers who design life critical safety systems for a living, and they all said something like this was going to happen when this product first came out. The example one of them gave was it was like a AED that could also let you recharge your phone, a moderately worthless feature that could only ever cause the failure of critical components.
[+] [-] dhughes|12 years ago|reply
http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Nest-Wave-and-how-do...
[+] [-] klinskyc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dm2|12 years ago|reply
There's a fine line between too sensitive and not sensitive enough.
If I burn something while cooking I do NOT want the smoke detector to go off (it's loud), and the Wave feature takes 3 or 4 seconds before it registers.
Plus there are a lot of configurations to account for. Some people put the units on the walls while others on the ceiling. The Nest has to guess how far away people are when the walk by and how far people will be when they wave. Putting them on the ceiling with 10+ foot ceilings verses putting one on the wall in a small hallway will require different sensitivities for the Wave feature.
If you have multiple Nest Protects then they will all go off when one detects smoke or carbon monoxide, so the Wave bug won't matter too much.
[+] [-] dsl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ensignavenger|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mkesper|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwowsersx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|12 years ago|reply
I would assume they would use a new sensor to do a more discriminating job of detecting the motion.
[+] [-] psadauskas|12 years ago|reply
I have a Nest Thermostat that I love, but the Nest Protect doesn't seem nearly as cool or useful...
[+] [-] dbloom|12 years ago|reply
Research on this topic seems to indicate that CO dissipates pretty evenly:
"Contrary to a significant amount of public opinion, CO did not layer on the floor, float at the middle of the chamber, or rise to the top. In each case, the levels of CO equalized throughout the test chamber. It took longer to equalize when CO was infused at the top of the chamber than the bottom, but levels always became identical with time."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21536403
[+] [-] fancy_betta|12 years ago|reply
Nest protect costs $130 and yes you're expected to replace it after 7 years. It's actually a legal requirement to replace CO detectors after 7 years in many jurisdictions.
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
Carbon monoxide, CO at 28 is the same molecular weight as Nitrogen and therefore it diffuses similarly. This is part of what makes it so serious a hazard.
[+] [-] conitpicker|12 years ago|reply
The nest protect retails for US$129.00 and has a service lifetime of 7 years.
I recently checked all the smoke detectors at my parents house and found that they were all well past their 10-year replace-by date. (I replaced them, but not with Nest smoke detectors).
[+] [-] CCengineer|12 years ago|reply
Most modern CO alarms last 10 years. Nest chose the smaller sensor, which dies sooner. Very poor decision on their part.
For more detail: Nest uses a CO sensor by Figaro, TGS5342. This is a smaller version of Figaro's TGS5042. The CO sensor is filled with a water reservoir, with some air inlets to let gas enter. Over several years, the water evaporates out of those air inlets and the sensor dies.
Nest's smaller sensor has as smaller water reservoir, which means it doesn't last as long as the other alarms with a larger reservoir. First Alert uses the larger TGS5042 sensor, therefore it lasts longer. Kidde uses their own sensor, which also lasts 10 years.
[+] [-] electic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueskin_|12 years ago|reply