
Consumer Safety Notice for Nest Protect: Smoke and CO Alarm - uptown
https://nest.com/letter-from-the-ceo/
======
lovemenot
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.

~~~
tensenki
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.

~~~
ssmoot
Honda is selling a single purpose safety device with no moving parts called
the "Fit"? And it's had 4 recalls you say?

Won't that lead to confusion since they sell a car of the same name? With
millions of parts? That moves down the road by controlled explosions with
chemicals stored onboard the vehicle?

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FatalLogic
The support page for the Nest Wave feature is interesting

[http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Nest-Wave-and-how-
do...](http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Nest-Wave-and-how-does-it-work)

 _> 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
_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?

~~~
IgorPartola
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.

~~~
userbinator
The fact that they can do it remotely is not as creepy as how they've worded
it and seemingly provided no instruction on how you can do it yourself.

------
rdl
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.

~~~
k-mcgrady
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?

~~~
cr3ative
In the UK smoke alarms are generally permanently installed to a ceiling.
Moving it isn't an option.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Really? I'm in the UK and they're just fixed up with a couple of screws.

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techwatching
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.

~~~
jsumrall
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.

------
erichurkman
Very awesome and direct response by Nest. Kudos.

Oftentimes, recalls or other safety notices do not adequately spell out
specific issues, merely allude to a vague "safety issue." Transparency is
good.

~~~
dfc

      > 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:

[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-
critical-...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-
security-bug.html)

~~~
erichurkman
Fair enough, but for a consumer product, it's specific at least from the
recalls and safety warnings I've been exposed to as a consumer (car recalls,
child safety products, food, etc).

~~~
dfc
Excerpt from most recent smoke alarm recall from CPSC:

    
    
      > In  cooperation   with  the  U.S. Consumer  Product   Safety  Commission
      > (CPSC), Universal  Security Instruments Inc.,  of Owings Mills,  Md., is
      > voluntarily recalling  about 34,000  smoke alarms. The smoke  alarms can
      > fail to  alarm when smoke or  fire is present. A capacitor  in the alarm
      > can burn out, releasing smoke and melting the cover.
    
      > Universal  has  received  three  reports of  alarms  failing,  releasing
      > smoke. There has been one report of minor  smoke damage to the wall of a
      > mobile home. No injuries have been reported.
    
      > Consumers can identify  the recalled models by removing  the alarm cover
      > from  its base  and  looking for  the manufacture  date  code and  model
      > number. The  smoke  alarms  are  made  of white  plastic  and  have  the
      > manufacture date  code and  model number  imprinted on  the back  of the
      > alarm.
    

[https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2000/CPSC-Universal-
Security...](https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2000/CPSC-Universal-Security-
Instruments-Announce-Recall-of-Smoke-Alarms/)

~~~
userbinator
In other words, a smoke-emitting smoke alarm?

~~~
epochwolf
Must be made in Britain. Their fire extinguishers have a tendency to ignite on
use. (According to the IT Crowd tv series)

~~~
growupkids
And their realistic screensavers.

------
bananas
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.

------
koenigdavidmj
It's only a convenience feature anyway, it seems.

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
A convenience feature that could have killed you.

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.

~~~
sliverstorm
Or perhaps a car airbag that can be disabled by spoken word

------
klinskyc
I'm really wondering what unique circumstances could cause this. Flapping your
arms out of fear when you see a fire?

~~~
dm2
Probably running/walking past the smoke alarm.

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.

~~~
michaelt
Any by all accounts the sensors are ultrasound - cost effective, but not a
famously high resolution sensing mechanism.

[1]
[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057#s...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057#s55891)

~~~
dm2
I think there are also a couple of other sensors which also help detect
movement and waving. They call them "occupancy" and "activity" sensors.

[http://support.nest.com/article/Learn-more-about-the-Nest-
Pr...](http://support.nest.com/article/Learn-more-about-the-Nest-Protect-
sensors)

------
ensignavenger
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.

------
mkesper
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?

~~~
userbinator
Personally, I wouldn't trust an Arduino for anything safety-critical...

~~~
mkesper
Do you know of any better approaches?

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xwowsersx
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.

~~~
ars
How do you know it will be a software fix? (Other than just disabling the
feature.)

I would assume they would use a new sensor to do a more discriminating job of
detecting the motion.

~~~
dm2
I strongly doubt they will replace the sensors, maybe it's influence the
hardware in a 2nd version but they have plenty of sensors in the current Nest
protect.

It's more of a matter of better measuring the room to allow the unit to guess
when someone is walking by and when someone is standing in front of the unit
and waving.

The sensors are almost working perfectly. Because this device is relied upon
to save peoples lives and there are also legal repercussions to allowing a
known bug, they have to make sure that the waving and walking can be
distinguished 100% of the time.

Only in a very rare situation (like having the unit at shoulder level or in a
hallways with a very low ceiling combined with multiple people running past
it) would the unit malfunction.

------
psadauskas
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...

~~~
conitpicker
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).

~~~
sliverstorm
Fun little tangent; I don't know how old my smoke detectors are, but the one
by my front door gets a little test every now and again. One of my neighbors
burns a fireplace on cold days. Invisible (but smellable) quantities of wood
smoke pool under the rafters of my porch; the next morning, when I leave
through the door, the smoke alarm always chirps for a moment! It amazed me how
sensitive it is, when I first figured out what was going on.

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blueskin_
Where's the consumer warning that their data is now accessible to google and
the NSA?

