The up-side of this is that not only will NSA know that someone is home, but what room they are in

Nest Developers Program and Web API
Nest’s Next Product Will Be a Smoke Detector Called Protect

..assuming that the products interact. The smoke detectors could be remote sensors for the thermostat, feeding back both temperatures and occupancy.

I'm very close to pulling the trigger on a natural gas powered emergency generator for my house, since our neighborhood has lots of big trees and above-ground power lines. The newest generation of those generators have Ethernet jacks on them. It would be awfully nice if they could converse with the Nest to maintain a power budget (e.g., don't run both AC zones at once to make sure we stay under the generator's power budget). At least in theory, this API could make such a hack possible. Hmm.

Wow. That's pretty huge news. My primary complaint about the Nest was that it was a completely isolated automation product. It was a thermostat, and it wouldn't interact with any other home automation systems. It made no sense at all to me to have to use separate apps for each automation product in your home. Clearly they're trying to expand into a whole-home system, so that addresses that concern.

The second biggest issue I had with Nest was that aside from remote control and phone apps, I wouldn't have been able to use any of the features that make the product compelling simply for the fact that our thermostat is in a location that nobody ever walks past, so the motion-activated features would be useless. If they can make their smoke detectors act as remote motion sensors, that would be fantastic. However, I question the usefulness of smoke detectors as remote temperature sensors. I want a temp sensor to be lower in the room, not on the ceiling. But it's better than nothing.

The one issue I have with the way Nest does things that I'm not sure they can address is the issue of non-standard schedules. My wife has a 9-5 job, yes, but I do not. I work out of my home, and there is absolutely no set schedule for when I'm in and out of my house. That makes the learning aspect of the system useless, IMO.

I still have BIG questions about this new direction for Nest. The first one is: whole the heck is Control4? I don't know why, but I've never heard of them in all the time I've been into home automation. Perhaps it's because it appears they only work through authorized dealers. Ugh. So I'm guessing it's a proprietary system. How does that work with the API they're releasing? Are they going to integrate with more systems than just Control4? I have a lot of questions about this...

The smoke detectors will have built in lasers for measuring the temperature in various parts of the room....down side is you'll have to wear protective glasses all the time....

I'm interested to see where this is going, and how affordable it will be. Given how well the Nest sold, they got the pricing right with the masses.

But if I run the smoke machine so I can watch the beams scan the room, won't that set off the smoke detector? Clearly they didn't think this through.

No, you didn't read the fine print. They offer a filter kit for the sensors so you can use colored smoke and not trip the alarm.

tanstaafl.

I imagine that they use IR cameras, just like you find in those $40 temperature guns. The laser is just for aim. The camera is what's doing the work. I don't know how many cameras they might use per thermostat, but it's interesting to think about, since this would be potentially quite helpful in sorting out which rooms are getting too much or not enough air. I've run around my house tweaking with the vents to try to balance things, but this could let me get things more accurate.

Dan, do you have a "Cycle" mode on your current thermostat? It might help make things more comfortable in your house.

I certainly know what it's like to keep opening and closing vents.

I'm still a little uncertain what the deal is with this Control4 company. I have no idea what kind of tech they're using...

Nest has an option to run the fan without running the AC or heat. That chews up a bunch of power. I decided it was easier to just spend a bunch of time walking back and forth and monkeying with dampers until the rooms started to feel the same.

Does it say how much power that consumes? I wouldn't think it would be too much if the AC isn't running as well.

I'd forgotten that you already had the Nest.

Depends on the blower size. Figure a half-horsepower motor in a larger house, perhaps, drawing 5A @ 120V. That's 500-600W.

And it is live:
http://www.nest.com/blog/2013/10/08/meet-the-nest-protect-smoke-and-co-alarm/
Still trying to figure out how much use the thermostat will make of having additional sensors in the house - so far the only integration point I've picked up on is that the smoke alarm will use the thermostat to connect to the outside world....I hope there is a lot more.

My house is going to need seven of these things (gulp) but I decided to go for it. The killer feature, if you're somebody who cooks and occasionally smokes up the kitchen, is that it will give you a "heads up" and you can walk over and wave your hand to silence it. No loud alarm.

The other great feature is that I'll never have to replace 9V batteries again. It seems that once every year or two, usually when the temperature first gets chilly in the fall, all the fire alarms in the house will start chirping at 2am. This is deeply annoying. With the new Nest, this problem goes away. (Presumably, there's a rechargeable lithium battery in there, and it charges from the 120V wires that my house already has for its original fire alarm.)

Interestingly, not only will you get notifications to your phone, but they'll also directly contact the fire department for emergencies. This suggests that a future feature might be a burglar alarm, since each smoke detector is also now a motion detector. The only missing piece of hardware to add would be some sort of cellular data path in case the landline is cut.

Amusing note from the Nest Protect's user manual: Nest Protect has a limited life like any smoke/ CO alarm. Nest Protect lifetime is 7 years. You will need to replace Nest Protect after 7 years with a brand new Nest Protect. Check the date of replacement written on the back of Nest Protect.

It appears that, when it "expires" it chirps once a minute -- annoying the hell out of you until you replace it.

Three in the hardwired version version, and six in the non-hardwired version.

Given that the data path is through the internet, you'll need a dual-WAN router, with failover to 3G/4G...

Digging a bit deeper, there will also soon be something called "Nest Protect for Security Systems". Quote:

Nest Protect for Security Systems will be available in the first half of 2014.

This Nest Protect model is similar to the Nest Protect (Battery), but engineered to connect with existing security system control panels.

Nest Protect for Security Systems requires professional installation and will be available through the Nest Certified resellers.

Who knows whether they're planning to compete with them as well. I don't know, but I'd be happy to decommission my current home alarm system for something with Nest levels of spit and polish.

One last note: yee olde smoke and carbon monoxide detector, the fancy interconnectable ones, seem to cost all of $45/ea. The cheap fire-only ones that my builder installed seem more like $15/ea. Once again, Nest is charging significant more than "equivalent" products, but is getting away with it by virtue of building a better experience all around.

Good introduction video.


Product page also indicates the units all link together wirelessly on their own over 802.15.4. No need for working WiFi to still have the multi room notifications. WiFi is for setup, and for the mobile notifications integration.

Nest Protect for Security Systems is coming in 2014 (Integrates with other security systems). http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Nest-Protect-for-Security-Systems

And hoping everyone is bad at math, too.
The Nest has a battery that renders the unit useless after 6-7 years. The $45 simpler ones last for decades.

Seven years from now, I'm hoping they'll be better and cheaper in a bunch of ways to at least partially justify the "you've got to be kidding me" pain of replacing them.

CO detectors tend to have a lifespan of 2-7 years. Smoke detectors about 10. Replacement is advised after those times due to needing a newer sensor. Same applies for the Nest detector. It's not tied to battery life.

CO detector lifespan from two manufacturers:
http://www.kidde.com/customerservice/pages/replacecoalarmsevery7years.aspx
http://www.firstalert.com/faqs/co-alarm/...a-co-alarm-last

Smoke detector recommendation from fire marshals citing the 10 year recommendation:
https://www.firemarshals.org/rfsi/smokealarmfacts.html

10 years seems to have been picked based on historical failure rates. 3% fail in 10 years to detect properly. Out to 20 years and it jumps to 46% (Based on a Minnesota study, also referencing a study by the Ontario Canada Housing Corporation. https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/sfm/public-...replacement.pdf )

If this is just a fancy smoke alarm, then it is over-priced. If they are not extending the capabilities of the Thermostat it is a disappointment, but they are, ever so slightly, so I suspect they will add onto that in the future, but who knows.

Thermostats are not sexy, but they got plenty of regular folks to pay $249 for them, and neither are smoke & co2 alarms, but I expect many folks will pony up $129 for them, but is seven really necessary? Dan, do you have a sprawling ranch, or are you sticking one in every bedroom?

Every Nest smoke detector has a motion detector, which is then used to feed into the "Auto-Away" aspect of the Nest thermostat. Also, if the carbon-monoxide detector alarms, it tells the thermostat to turn off the gas furnace. That's actually pretty cool. What's interesting to me is the whole house integration (e.g., "smoke detected in the kitchen" being announced throughout the house) as well as the integration with the app (e.g., a push notification to your phone that an alarm has sounded).

Why do I need 7 of them? My house was built in 2007. It's got four bedrooms, each with its own smoke detector. There are two more in various hallways, and one downstairs around the corner from the kitchen. I assume that it was some sort of building code that led the builder to install so many of them. I figure, if I'm going to do it, I might as well do it right and see how well it works.

I see the cost differently I suppose. We've been promised "smart homes" of the future. To get there, someone has to actually build that smart piece. And yep, at first the cost is going to be higher.

Investments in the future cost money. Had people before me decided to not pay a bit over a million for their computer, I wouldn't have a 64 bit pocket computer today that happens to make phone calls.

I installed AC hardwired smoke detectors during the last heavy renovation. They are all wired together as part of the standard 3-conductor AC wiring scheme outlined in the installation instructions. When any one of them triggers, they all sound. I think this has become almost standard now.

Apparently most fires do not cause the AC power to fail, at least not on the circuit powering the detectors. By the time the wiring has been burned through, the people should be long evacuated. Batteries go dead much more often than AC failures coincident with unexpected fire events.

I note that the built-in Lithium battery powered smoke detectors have enough energy to run for the rated 10-year life span, at which time they start beeping to demand their retirement from service.

Yeah, and when one of them is regularly falsing at 3am, only one or two nights a year, that design means you can't tell which one falsed and needs replacing. :-)

I disconnected the inteconnection wires on them all and sure enough, one of them falsed, just one, and I finally replaced it. :-)

That's why they have a "test button". We have three smoke detectors here, all of which are 25-30 years old, and all of which still detect burnt toast just fine.

Cost was about $15 each at the time.

Well, from the Silhouette Operating Manual is says that you can tell them apart. Mind you at 3AM I might not remember what each flashing LED combo means either.

To be fair, on most any smoke detector, the test button will verify that the battery is alive and can power the speaker. It won't necessarily verify that the various sensors are operating at their original specifications.

Given that you can buy bulk packs of standard detectors for very reasonable prices, there's very little reason not to follow the fire marshall's ten year replacement recommendation. The obvious analogy is replacing your engine oil on a regular schedule, rather than waiting for something more expensive to go wrong.

That's certainly not what the test button does on the detectors we have here. When pushing the button, there's a short, noticeable delay, before the alarm is activated. That's because it really is testing the sensor, not just the (duh) battery and beeper.

These things are hazardous radioactive waste, and should not be disposed of on a whim before their useful lifespan is up. Doing so would be just like changing one's automobile oil every 2000miles (as huge numbers of wasteful people do), instead of every 5000-8000miles as recommended by the manufacturer.

In the case of smoke detectors, and lots of other "consumer goods", the maker has a vested interest in getting us to buy more, and more often, than needed. And thanks to the USA they're also far too paranoid about getting sued over defective units which expire earlier than usual. Thus the recommendations to be more wasteful than necessary.

Cheers

My situation was worse than that.

First of all, it wasn't that particular model of smoke alarm, so I'm not sure it had that LED-blinky feature at all. My house has much cheaper models that the contractors installed. It was still a Kidde brand, just a different model line. I don't remember anything in my research about light blink patterns, and I did a lot of research when I encountered the issue initially. (Other than the low-battery indicator blink pattern, which wasn't the case here.)

The worse problem was: According to that quote you cited, the blink pattern only shows during the alarm itself. My alarms would false at 3am for approximately 10 seconds, enough to wake us up and give us heart attacks, then they would stop and everything would be back to normal like nothing happened. So if there was a blink pattern, I would never have seen it.

It took a couple of years for me to realize how to do something about the issue. Since the issue was so rare, and the diagnosis so tricky. Finally digging into the wires and realizing that I could safely remove the interconnect wires from all the harness plugs was the trick.