Just thank that...
... it is not yet connected to an automatic fire suppression system...
My Nest smoke alarm was great … right up to the point it went nuts
"I thought it was supposed to talk and tell us when the battery was low," my wife said. In retrospect, that was the first sign that all was not well with the Nest Protect smoke and CO detector. One of the main reasons, in fact probably the reason that the $99 device is on the wall as opposed to one of the many smoke detectors …
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Wednesday 5th October 2016 21:02 GMT Chris G
What is 'Smart'?
Frankly, I am dubious that anything mass produced that is claimed to be Smart, actually is.
Unless the the item is approaching laptop prices I doubt there is much in the way of either hardware or programming that could be honestly described as smart or intelligent, these things are designed and produced to a price that sounds as though it is offering good value for money. Function may be a bit more than your average smoke detector but for under a hundred quid nothing is going to be that smart .
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Thursday 6th October 2016 07:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Profiling & monetization
Given that Google owns Nest now, I think this is inevitable.
Since it has motion sensors, it probably knows if you get up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night on a regular basis. You'll probably start seeing ads for whatever they give old men to stop them from doing that!
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Thursday 6th October 2016 10:35 GMT Unicornpiss
Re: What is 'Smart'?
Babies can be surprisingly smart. It's only after they learn to communicate with adults, go through our educational systems, and have some angst-y failures in life that they become the idiots that don't use turn signals, 'downsize' companies, work in Apple stores, do telemarketing, and possibly end up on the nightly news. (either as the main attraction or the newscasters)
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Thursday 6th October 2016 13:51 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Re: What is 'Smart'?
I fear that if I am ever forced to live in a smart house I will end up with a load of self-satisfied and chatty doors, an elevator sulking in the basement, and a nutrimatic machine insisting I want a cup filled with a liquid, which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Doffs hat (black fedora today) to the late, great Douglas Adams
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Friday 7th October 2016 18:25 GMT Trigonoceps occipitalis
Re: What is 'Smart'?
My experience is that the smarter the device the smarter the user needs to be to get the most out of it. I suspect here will be many smart devices that end up being as effective as their dumb equivalents because they are used by dumb (or at least the ignorant in things IT) people.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 08:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What is 'Smart'?
They would be "smart" if they used a network of different sensors to rule out false alarms. For example comparing smoke read outs with IR and temperature sensors readouts (of course you'd need more sensors scattered around than a single one....). They could also set up a light path for the safest evacuation route, while calling for help.
That would be being "smart". A device just designed to gather more and more data about you pretending to be somewhat useful is not "smart" - is "cunning" or "wily"...
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Thursday 6th October 2016 08:44 GMT NightFox
Re: What is 'Smart'?
Well, I'll grant you that it's not quite 'smart' in that it doesn't involve any conditional decision making, but there is IoT integration beyond just the smoke detectors - if one of my Nest smoke detectors triggers, it will automatically turn off my central heating boiler (controlled by Tado) and turn on all my Philips Hue lights in red, which apparently provides better lighting in a smoke-filled environment.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 19:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What is 'Smart'? @NightFox
it will automatically turn off my central heating boiler (controlled by Tado) and turn on all my Philips Hue lights in red, which apparently provides better lighting in a smoke-filled environment.
Cool. Can you choose the alarm sound? Klaxon would be good. Then, don't wash or shave for weeks, and you can act out scenes from Das Boot. Bark orders at the kids, pretend the toilet flush lever actually launches torpedoes, and then lurch around drunkenly pretending that you're being depth charged. You could pretend that your laptop is an Enigma machine, and smash it up to stop it falling into enemy hands, as well.
And Google are offering you that starring role in your own drama, with free repeats for what, $200 ?
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Thursday 6th October 2016 14:18 GMT JDX
Re: What is 'Smart'?
Unless the the item is approaching laptop prices I doubt there is much in the way of either hardware or programming that could be honestly described as smart or intelligent
You mean like a Raspberry Pi? Or a £50 smart-phone? The whole driving force behind IoT is that fairly powerful computers are now dirt cheap to the extent you can put them in stuff at little extra cost.
These things could work great - your smoke alarm raises your house lights (maybe leaving the kids' rooms out for you to alert them).
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Thursday 6th October 2016 20:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
@JDX - whole driving force behind IoT
You say the driving force is "fairly powerful computers are dirt cheap to the extent you can put them in stuff at little extra cost". I think the driving force is adding features no one needs so you can charge more for a product that should be simple like a thermostat, refrigerator or light bulb.
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Friday 7th October 2016 12:59 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: @JDX - whole driving force behind IoT
> I think the driving force is adding features no one needs so you can charge more
And don't forget all that lovely data[2] you can accumulate on the poor saps that use your 'service' for free[1]..
[1] Which actually isn't.
[2] Lots of data == loadsamoney from/for unscrupulous vendors.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 09:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
idiots with more money than sense...
I live in a rental. Owners over here are obliged to put those screaming, battery consuming bastards -the cheapest they can find of course- on the ceiling of every room and/or hallway.
First thing was removing the batteries from each and every one of them.
But otoh I do prohibit open fire in the house. (eg. candles)
Household appliances not in use are not connected to any power outlet, especially the ones without a physical on/off switch.
You are allowed to smoke, but ashtrays stay on the sink until the next morning instead of emptying them into the bin before going to sleep. Checking if the stove is turned off has become a habit.
Works fine.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 11:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
As a current landlord in the UK, we pay to install a mains powered (with battery backup) interconnected alarm system, with CO detector, along with annual gas safety checks and regular electrical safety checks as required.
I am happy to confirm that seeing everything disconnected at inspection means that your tenancy agreement is not going to be renewed as:
- I don't want problems with my insurance when you burn the place down, and
- I don't want you suing me when all the other members of your household die in a fire because "the alarms didn't go off".
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Friday 7th October 2016 07:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
Yup.
However, we normally start people with a 6 month trial agreement before going for longer, with the first inspection 3 months in. Realistically speaking it is going to be quite expensive and take damn near 3 months to actually go through full eviction proceedings, so it's often easier to just wait.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 11:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
Three years ago, my neighbour's (adjoining) house went up in flames (due to a malfunctioning massage seat). Turns out there were two fire engines and a ladder, with all the bells and whistles full on, underneath my bedroom window for five hours. Didn't hear a thing since I was asleep. Smoke detectors are of no use to me. The only thing I can do is to avoid it from happening by acting careful. All the rest is bad luck. Karma if you like.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 12:32 GMT Stoneshop
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
Didn't hear a thing since I was asleep. Smoke detectors are of no use to me.
You want a NEST bed: one that tips over when the NEST smoke alarm signals it to wake you up.
The NEST Bed Super Deluxe Plus will move out the bedroom door and tip you down the stairs to save time.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 16:16 GMT Siberian Hamster
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
First term in university I got rudely shaken awake by my room mate. After asking why he would do such un-godly thing (may have used expletives too) he rather calmly told me the fire alarm had been going off outside our room for the last 5 mins and I hadn't even woken up. To be honest, it was pretty loud...
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Friday 7th October 2016 16:28 GMT Jon 37
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
> Didn't hear a thing since I was asleep. Smoke detectors are of no use to me.
If you're deaf, you can get vibrating pads that go under your pillow, and vibrate to wake you up if the fire alarm goes off. Alternatively, if your hearing is just bad, you may be OK with having a smoke alarm in the bedroom & linking them all up.
Both options are going to cost more than a cheap battery-powered smoke alarm, but they might save your life.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 11:51 GMT Antron Argaiv
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
However, if you DO pay $99 for something, you expect it to:
1. Do what it claims to do
and
2. Not be a piece of cr@p
Seems like the author's Nest failed on both counts.
Re: batteries. Our state has mandated that all new construction (since about 1990) have hardwired smoke detectors. No more batteries.
// Appropriate icon
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Thursday 6th October 2016 12:21 GMT JetSetJim
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
> Re: batteries. Our state has mandated that all new construction (since about 1990) have hardwired smoke detectors. No more batteries.
Err - don't they have battery backups inside them for when the fire takes out your power supply before they get a chance to deafen you?
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Friday 7th October 2016 13:02 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: idiots with more money than sense...
> have hardwired smoke detectors
Which is all very well if they fit decent ones. And not the ones our new house (admittedly in 1997) came with - even opening the oven door while baking a cake set off the smoke alarms.
And forget about doing toast or roast potatoes - guarenteed hysteria from the smoke alarms.
Now replaced with less paranoid and more efficient ones.
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Wednesday 5th October 2016 21:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
"If your smart thermostat goes wrong, you could end up roasting or freezing."
That is exactly what happened to many Nest central heating systems last winter. Apparently it took several weeks for a firmware update to be issued to fix everyone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat-glitch-battery-dies-software-freeze.html?_r=0
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Thursday 6th October 2016 07:00 GMT GlenP
You don't need "smart"...
for that to happen. Many years ago, and I hate to admit this, I had an Austin Maestro (it was a cheap stop-gap buy) with one of the first ECUs, including an electric choke. Since the box thought the temperature was permanently high it would never activate the choke making starting in winter a pain.
Plus point in those days though was it could be solved by disassembly and resoldering dodgy joints.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 08:57 GMT Martin an gof
Re: You don't need "smart"...
(ECUs)
I had a Rover with a K-series engine. Electronic ignition still had a distributor and rotor arm, but the timing was all done electronically. Water got in the distributor and it all corroded and fell apart. At a road junction.
Fixed with the spring from a ball-point pen.
Drove the next 40 miles or so better than it had done for the previous couple of weeks :-)
Same car had this really odd problem where if the petrol tank was less than about a third full, the engine would cut out on left-hand bends. Bloke who has looked after my car for years and years couldn't work out what was wrong but I just learned to deal with it. I ended up selling the car at around 200,000 miles and it was still going.
I have a bog-standard smoke alarm that cost me about ten quid, and the occasional battery. IT JUST WORKS.
M.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 10:05 GMT Stoneshop
Re: You don't need "smart"...
Same car had this really odd problem where if the petrol tank was less than about a third full, the engine would cut out on left-hand bends.
A while back we had a car that was converted to run on LPG, with the option to switch back to petrol if you ran out. One day we had to run the LPG tank empty because a valve had to be replaced, and so we did. Driving, the engine dies just a few km from home (and the garage), and I flip the selector switch back to petrol. The engine stays dead. Coast to a stop. Check that, yes, there's petrol in the tank. Try to start again. Nope. Nada. Doornail territory. Call roadside assistance and get towed home. Figured out what the problem was: the tube internal to the tank sticking down into the petrol had dropped off its fitting, and the pump was just sucking vapours.
And the Vauxhall Viva that was my first car had a pinhole leak somewhere in a fuel line so that when you parked it with the tank filled over two-thirds, the excess petrol would find its way out. Filling up fully, then driving until you were down past the 2/3 mark: no problem.
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Thursday 6th October 2016 11:52 GMT Antron Argaiv
Re: You don't need "smart"...
I had a Rover with a K-series engine. Electronic ignition still had a distributor and rotor arm, but the timing was all done electronically. Water got in the distributor and it all corroded and fell apart. At a road junction.
Lucas?
They don't call him the Prince of Darkness for nothing...
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Thursday 6th October 2016 14:19 GMT Martin an gof
Re: You don't need "smart"...
Lucas? Possibly, dunno. Replaced it (the rotor arm and the cap) with cheap Halfords own-brand which also eventually failed through water ingress, but at a total parts cost under £20 (IIRC) I didn't really mind. The fact that contrary to normal practice, making something electronic and "intelligent" actually made servicing easier (no need to faff with the timing) was a pleasant surprise.
M.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
