Quick, think of the most counter-productive features you could ask for in a product. A water-soluble teapot? Un-erasable pencil lead? Perforated condoms? How about a smoke alarm that you can turn off? By accident.
Nest may be the big name in home automation right now, but for all the good that they’ve done recently they may have brought an enormous setback upon themselves. They have had to cancel sales of their Protect smoke alarm after it has come to light that its wave-to-silence feature may be activated without some users even knowing.
First of all, the idea of even having a mutable smoke alarm seems a little odd to us. Yes, it can be annoying when you’re cooking something particularly smoky (or just badly) in the kitchen and you have to keep running off to silence an over-sensitive alarm, but that’s kind of the point. They’re supposed to be sensitive, and they’re supposed to be impossible to ignore.
With the Protect, the idea is that should a simple kitchen malfunction occur it gives you a warning before it is about to sound. This gives you the opportunity to wave your hand underneath it (in the same way you’d fan away smoke) thus telling it to keep quiet for a bit. Regardless of whether or not you like the idea, what nobody should like is the fact that this can apparently be triggered by accident. The Protect has apparently been mistaking movements near the device for waves, when they of course actually aren’t. What’s worse, those who have unwittingly waved off their Protect often have no idea, meaning that in the event of an actual fire there would be a delay in their alert.
Nest are rolling out an update in the next 24 hours to remove the feature, and also offering full refunds to any dissatisfied/terrified owners of the product.
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