Nest Protect is a terrible buggy product

https://plus.google.com/115863474911002159675/posts/bpUvi6BBubm

by somerandomness • 11 years ago

295 191 11 years ago

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oloboWd• 11 years ago

One experience like this would be enough to put me off of home automation for about 10 years. I think its unfortunate that Nest chose a target so fraught with safety implications for their second device. A lot could be done to ameliorate problems like this if the consequences of a false negative were not so catastrophic.

vinceguidry2• 11 years ago

I'm going to buy a condo here in the next year, I plan on rolling my own automation with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. It's the only way to do it right.

Grazester• 11 years ago

You are going to build your own smoke and fire detector and "do it right"?

vinceguidry2• 11 years ago

Where did you get "smoke and fire detector" from "rolling my own automation"? But I can just buy an off-the-shelf detector that actually gets its primary purpose right and hook into that.

CamperBob210• 11 years ago

Apparently Nest can't, so why not try?

Udo• 11 years ago

Apparently HN takes a very dim view on people talking about rolling their own home automation - but as someone who's done it, I say: go for it! It's fun and as a hacker you'll have an easy time making something not achievable with consumer solutions.

Within the context of the article, I think false positive in smoke detectors are always inevitable, and by law they can't be silenced. But what a smart home system could do is allow you to intercede and prevent the defective one from cascade-infecting every other device.

CamperBob210• 11 years ago

Apparently HN takes a very dim view on people talking about rolling their own home automation

There used to be a very different crowd around here. I've been looking around for a site like what HN used to be, when "H" stood for "Hacker" and not "Helpless," but so far no good suggestions have come to light.

Terretta• 11 years ago

I run five of them, three powered and two battery. One of them "falsed" twice in one week about three months after installation, and not at all in the four months since. So I think it wasn't false, I think there was something triggering it. I've had zero other issues.

Note these were all purchased before Nest turned off the waving, but have been updated with e firmware that ignores the wave.

I also run nine of the original batch of thermostats with no issues, and any minor complaints (e.g. turning off heat when in direct sunlight) have all been addressed over the years of updates.

jms703• 11 years ago

I wonder if one if his neighbors is messing with his nest. Maybe someone has figured out a way to set off nest alarms.

brendanr3• 11 years ago

Nest did a great job with their thermostat, but the Protect leaves a lot to be desired. I was vacuuming which triggered the sensor. The alarm went off, and it was really loud.

I looked at how to hush it, and couldn't figure out how. My alarm was too high up to safely climb up and press the button -- I had paid for somebody to install it safely before.

So I called their support, and they told me they couldn't legally add a feature to turn it off. Which is a bit bewildering, considering that wave-to-hush had been a launch feature (albeit removed for apparent reliability issues). So I had to dangerously climb up high and remove the alarm and take out the battery.

But the worst thing? It never alerted my phone.

I have my own theories about why this happened. I had recovered my iPhone and not logged back into the Nest app, which I think is required for notifications to start flowing again.

But the support guy thought Nest engineering would be back in touch with me to discuss this crucial flaw within two weeks. Months later, I've not heard back.

Nest had a ton of options after the thermostat. It feels like they put a smaller B team on the smoke detector, despite it being a critically important safety device. It's really bewildering how the Protect turned out this way.

More generally, the lesson is that the Internet of Things is going to be fraught with complications.

bgentry• 11 years ago

Apparently "dirty" power is a major trigger for the wired Nest Protect's false alarms. It's not surprising that your vacuum cleaner was enough to trigger this.

CloudFlare's CEO was ranting about his ~daily false alarms about 6 months ago: "dirty power common on PG&E SF causes small blips in light emitter. Nest interprets as smoke."

More detail here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40eastdakota%20nest&src=typd

brendanr3• 11 years ago

Actually mine just runs on batteries. I think they have an optical sensor which can be triggered by dust. I was told by support that they used to recommend blowing the debris out, but it wasn't good for customer confidence.

engi_nerd12• 11 years ago

Do they not have an internal power supply to smooth out voltage spikes?

brendanr3• 11 years ago

I might add that never alerting my phone was the worst thing simply because it was the only reason to buy a Protect. A regular smoke detector continues to detect smoke just fine.

XorNot• 11 years ago

This has been a problem with I think literally every IoE type device I've tried. I'm in Australia so I assume the reason is that everyone buys some AWS service in America, and 500ms of latency hits and server load means stuff times out in the end.

Which seems to suggest some bad things about the ability of the designers of these things to build a robust product and forsee obvious problems.

jrockway6• 11 years ago

I saw this last night and admit that I've watched the video a couple times. It's a fascinating view into what users are really doing with your product.

And, I'm really impressed with the filmmaking skill exhibited in this short video. The transition between walking with the camera and setting it down to rip the smoke alarm off the ceiling is perfect, and the framing there is great. As the film proceeds, Brad's breathing becomes more apparent and faster, as the tension builds to a climax of automatons screaming "emergency" and "can't be hushed here, can't be hushed here hushed here". I also appreciate the exposure as Brad walks into the garage to find an improvised grave for his machine overlords; completely black, and out of the blackness comes an insulated water cooler, perfectly sized for the smoke alarms. Finally, I like how the anger, tension, and action escalates progressively through the film. It starts off with some walking around, and gradually becomes more violent. The timing is just perfect.

Perhaps not intentional, but it's just so wonderful. This should be submitted to a film festival. It's the most fascinating "home video" I've seen in ages.

(Edit to add one more thing: I think the real genius is the computerized voice, not quite speaking with casual American English rhythm, telling the user that they can't do the exact action they requested by physically pressing a button. Obviously, Stanley Kubrick beat Brad to the punch by a few years, but it still works. And this is real life, not fiction.)

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

I concur regarding the film. It almost has an atmosphere of a dystopian sci-fi. Can't say whether that reflects poorly or not on the early stages of the IoT.

jrockway6• 11 years ago

I think it's an uncanny valley thing. When your computer says "Compiler Error 42", it's acting like a machine, which is fine. When it starts saying "Emergency: this alarm can't be hushed here," then it starts getting human.

I realize the Nest announcer might be a better GlaDOS than GlaDOS. (But not a better HAL than HAL.)

mintplant• 11 years ago

Speaking of dystopian sci-fi, the red ring and first-person perpective reminded me of the short film "What's in the Box?".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4

akhilcacharya2• 11 years ago

Its honestly the funniest videos I've seen all week.

ebspelman• 11 years ago

This is straight out of House of Leaves.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

Interestingly it was telling him the 'master bedroom' was the one that was detecting smoke and yet it was hard to tell if he ever made it to the master bedroom. I've always wondered what a herd of these would do if you loaned one to someone and their house was burning down, you're remaining ones would scream in sympathy or something.

enneff• 11 years ago

Almost the whole first minute or so of the video is in his master bedroom.

300bps• 11 years ago

You don't get a second chance with a product like this.

tdicola4• 11 years ago

The problem is if you have too many false alarms people will rip the smoke detector down and disable it. There's a fine balance.

sk5t• 11 years ago

I suspect 300bps means Nest doesn't get a second chance to produce a good smoke detector--not that the detector shouldn't be failsafe.

recursive• 11 years ago

I assume he means the product doesn't get a second chance to make a consumer impression because any sane person will abandons the product after a mishap like this.

tdicola4• 11 years ago

I don't think it's just Nests, I bought a First Alert smoke alarm a year ago and it just recently started giving me random false alarms. Battery is fine but something is setting it off (not fire or smoke, and yes it has both atomic and photoelectric sensors). I went searching for a good smoke alarm without lots of false alarm complaints and unfortunately every smoke alarm on Amazon has complaints about false alarms.

I think in recent years manufacturers have become paranoid about missing an alarm and being sued so they probably default to fire the alarm if there's absolutely any potential reason, real or imagined, that a fire might be occuring.

Spooky232• 11 years ago

Usually the culprit for lots of false alarms is an ionizing in the kitchen and poor placement.

tdicola4• 11 years ago

No these were false alarms at completely random times with no cooking, dusting, or other activity going on. A couple were late at night well after 2am and were pretty nerve rattling.

liyanage• 11 years ago

That's some harsh language directed at his coworkers...

bradfitz4• 11 years ago

They can take it. Or they can build better products.

I don't put on kid gloves when a product is this bad.

I'm nicer when it's a beta or unreleased. But I paid $500 for these, for a final product. This is unacceptable.

raldi23• 11 years ago

"If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by regulation."

https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-...

(Yes, I know the smoke detection was a malfunction, but occasional malfunctions like that are a fact of life. My ire is directed at regulators forbidding users from silencing their own smoke detectors without physically incapacitating them -- what were they thinking!?)

jrockway6• 11 years ago

It can be hushed if you stuff it into a cooler, apparently.

Spooky232• 11 years ago

They were thinking about protecting human life.

For example, people with cheapskate landlords who would be happy to leave a nonfunctional smoke detector that was muted installed rather than spend $20.

raldi23• 11 years ago

I'm not saying you should be able to permanently mute them; just for, say, 15 minutes per button press.

Also, cheapskate landlords would just take the battery out.

brudgers2• 11 years ago

There's a reason that smoke detectors operate the way they do. That reason is that people die when they don't.

The issue I have with the Nest smoke detector is that it is sold as a luxury consumer product. That puts it in the class of "the customer is always right" sales. The Venn diagram of that and things that are designed to save people's lives regardless of their tendency to statistically evaluate the risks and rewards of rare but deadly events inaccurately is disjoint.

If Nest did not comply with the regulations, they could not market their product as a smoke alarm.

raldi23• 11 years ago

Actually, people die when they incapacitate their smoke detectors because of false alarms that can't be silenced any other way.

Citation: http://www.nfpa.org/research/reports-and-statistics/fire-saf... which says that 60% of people who died in a housefire were in a building that had no operating smoke alarms. A few more quotes:

"Surprisingly, the death rate was much higher in fires in which a smoke alarm was present but did not operate than it was in home fires with no smoke alarms at all."

"Smoke alarm failures usually result from missing, disconnected, or dead batteries. People are most likely to remove or disconnect batteries because of nuisance activations."

eli3• 11 years ago

Is there a link to the regulation that requires this? I was under the impression that most states require a hush/silence button on new smoke alarms. False alarms are inevitable and a hush button reduces the temptation to permanently disable the device.

Shivetya3• 11 years ago

Luxury consumer product? Is that way of saying, you must be smart if you bought our product? It does seem to have some pretentiousness built into the marketing.

I prefer KISS when it comes to my life and smoke alarms are not something I am going to fool with. With regards to their thermostats, I rarely am in the rooms my house has thermostats but programmables were cheap and easy to setup.

mhandley• 11 years ago

My wife has silenced three smoke detectors by physically smashing them from the ceiling with a broom handle. It's a bad idea to persistently disturb her sleep.

That's what happens when you can't easily silence a smoke detector. Needless to say, after this treatment they didn't work so well - the only good thing about such a design is that it sells more smoke detectors. For a long time we simply didn't have any that worked though. We do now, but none of our replacement ones are linked together anymore - too much of a nuisance to replace the wiring she ripped out while silencing them.

engi_nerd12• 11 years ago

Or if you have it installed in your master bedroom, with an en-suite bathroom and a steamy shower. Nothing like having all your smoke alarms go off when you're in the shower! We contacted Nest. Their basic response: "Move the Nest Protect further away from the shower." Or, take the stupid thing off the ceiling and switch back to the previous smoke detector, which would detect smoke but was not fooled by water vapor.

Nest had marketed the device as a smoke alarm that you could silence -- because it would have a period where it would warn you that something was wrong before it triggered the alarm, and it would be possible to manually silence it -- but in my direct experience this period never happened. The Protects always went straight from "normal" to "ALARM" without any warning period. Of course the Protect unit in my kitchen never actually detected kitchen smoke, even when I once burned some food quite severely.

I also had a negative experience with the Nest thermostat. I'm still not sure if I had it wired wrong -- I don't believe so, because I had previously installed cheap-o Honeywell thermostats that worked flawlessly -- but one late spring night I turned on the air conditioner to lower the temperature a few degrees, and then went to bed.

I woke up a few hours later, drenched in sweat. Somehow the unit had commanded "EMER HEAT" on my heat pump instead of air conditioning. My bedroom was 91 degrees Fahrenheit! The target temp was 70F, which the unit was never reaching. But it wasn't smart enough to realize "Hey, my actions are just making the temperature INCREASE, I should stop and flag an error." Nest's response: "that's funny, it shouldn't have done that". I took the things off the wall the next day.

I am now very wary of "smart home" technology. I can't imagine the experience that a non-technically inclined user has...

asdfaoeu• 11 years ago

(Yes, I know the smoke detection was a malfunction, but occasional malfunctions like that are a fact of life. My ire is directed at regulators forbidding users from silencing their own smoke detectors without physically incapacitating them -- what were they thinking!?)

Well for most it just involves pulling the power cord or yanking the battery.

JshWright• 11 years ago

Right, and then it's far less likely to be there when you need it in an actual fire.

Shivetya3• 11 years ago

has anyone found where this regulation is? I have searched a few states and cannot find this restriction. I have found mounting and wiring restrictions but none on silencing.

pimlottc2• 11 years ago

I was curious about this. IANAL (or general contractor) but while it was easy to find lots of regulations about required installation of smoke detectors, I couldn't find any restrictions about silencing them. In particular, I turned out nothing in either California or San Francisco fire code.

Of course, Nest is selling to a national market, so I don't doubt that it's required somewhere in the US, but it sure doesn't seem to be that common.

ericfrederich• 11 years ago

Nobody mentioning the fact that he works for Google which owns Nest?

tdicola4• 11 years ago

Does it matter?

gk1• 11 years ago

That's the point of his disclaimer:

"Disclaimer: I am a Google employee. I paid for these myself. So I speak as myself."

mmanfrin• 11 years ago

It's a post critical of his employers product, and he clearly mentions he's part of Google -- what is there to mention?

alphakappa• 11 years ago

If it's this Brad Fitzpatrick [1], he probably doesn't need to give a damn anymore.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick

TrainedMonkey• 11 years ago

As per twitter discussion problem seems to be with insufficiently filtered input power: https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/566075097568391168

bradfitz4• 11 years ago

I now believe that conclusion to be false, after talking to more people.

engi_nerd12• 11 years ago

Can you share what you found?

pimlottc2• 11 years ago

"Can't be hushed here"

I've never used Nest Protect so I was curious about this. Why is it location-dependent? The Nest site has some info[0]:

Hushing works differently during an emergency. If Nest Protect detects emergency levels of smoke, it will sound an alarm that can’t be hushed, by regulation. However, you can hush the other Nest Protects in the house by pressing the button on the Nest Protect that detected the problem. So, when you press the Nest button on the Nest Protect in the bedroom, it will continue to alarm, but the Nest Protect in the living room will quiet down. We designed Nest Protect to hush this way so you can more easily communicate with other people in the house during an emergency while still being able to locate and address the source of the problem.

0: https://nest.com/support/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-...

raldi23• 11 years ago

The idea is supposed to be that if you accidentally told your basement smoke alarm that it was in the bedroom, you'd wake up hearing "Fire in the BEDROOM" and then you'd look around and see there's no fire in the bedroom and push the hush button and go back to sleep and meanwhile your basement is on fire.

So networked smoke alarms require you to visit the one that's detecting the fire and disable it locally.

Now, why they would ever make the regulations such that you can't temporarily silence the alarm, even when you're in direct physical contact with it, is beyond me.

bradfitz4• 11 years ago

And despite me silencing the master bedroom one, the other four didn't shut off. That's my major complaint.

pacala• 11 years ago

There multiple persons under the same roof, sleeping at night. The alarm in the basement sounds. You go in there. There is a thick smoke. You disable the alarm. You inhale too much smoke and fall down. The house burns down and everyone dies.

Of course, why on earth would you disable the alarm if indeed there is a ton of smoke is beyond me. But maybe there was a real-life case of somebody confused that did just that, and in the emotional aftermath regulation was passed to make sure this never happens again, common sense be damned.

jmenter• 11 years ago

I purchased a Nest thermostat and installed it as per the instructions. Set it to 69°F before going to sleep. I awoke at 3AM with the temperature at 83°F and no way to turn it off.

I had to rip it from the wall. It was one of the most frustrating technology experiences I've had in years, and I'll have to see something REALLY compelling if I'm ever to try home automation again.

engi_nerd12• 11 years ago

Nest pretty much says that you and I were doing it wrong.

It worked just fine for heat -- although I later found out that every time it turned on my heat pump it was activating the emergency heat. I tried finding a way to get the unit to be okay with ramping up the temperature over a longer period of time, but that setting was not exposed in their UI. All I wanted was to say "I don't really care what temperature the house is while I'm gone so long as it never goes below 55F or above 80F, but I want you to make sure that when I arrive home at 6PM the temperature has reached the point I set". But...alas, the unit never figured that out. The "learning mode" never actually did anything, no matter what I tried.

Fortunately I was able to get a full refund on the devices from Amazon.

ashark2• 11 years ago

I used to own a house equipped with a heat pump, and in heating mode the cheap-o thermostat would display "e heat". Maybe it's just common to use the same control circuit for that, that might otherwise be used for some sort of actual emergency heating device?

It just said "heat" when the furnace was on.

maxerickson4• 11 years ago

Did your nest ever properly call for cooling?

ckinnan2• 11 years ago

We had the same issue last year (professional install), and spent a lot of time working with Nest troubleshooting two different units. Nest either had a mystery incompatibility with a brand new Goodman HVAC or a dirty electrical current was frying the circuit on the Nest. We had to get a dumb thermostat instead, it works fine. :(

patcheudor• 11 years ago

You might want to check out a thread on thermostat safety I started over on the Spark Community awhile back: https://community.spark.io/t/spark-powered-thermostats-burni... .

It was a fascinating discussion all around with some interesting lessons:

1) No one seems to consider a thermostat as a device which requires safety controls.

2) The built-in safety controls on a consumer HVAC unit tend to be insufficient & kick in well after temperatures in a home can get dangerously hot, if they kick in at all.

3) Because of the custom nature of every HVAC install, with more air going to certain rooms than others, it's not possible to draw any conclusion about the nature of whether a situation with a rogue thermostat can become deadly.

4) It appears a large majority of digital thermostats are built to a "toy grade" standard.

This is likely a topic space that doesn't get enough attention and I hope I opened a few eyes over at Spark. The fact is, such incidents don't happen often so they simply don't get the attention. This is unfortunate, because with the state of modern safety systems and designs an out of control thermostat is something that should never happen.

peckrob• 11 years ago

I have such a love/hate relationship relationship with the Nest Thermostats. It took two years of tweaking, but I think I finally got them set.

When I first got them, they worked great in the sumemrtime. No complaints. But they were bloody awful for me in the winter:

* Nest would, randomly, refuse to turn on AUX heat. I woke up one morning and my house was in the upper 50s (the set temperature was 68) and Nest was just sitting there trying to run the heat pump instead of turning on AUX when it wasn't keeping up. At first I thought there was something wrong with my HVAC system, but I've had two different people look my system over, on three different occasions, and found everything working properly. Nest was just refusing to turn on AUX.

The first time it happened it was in the single digits outside and Nest let my house get into the upper 50s (temperature was set at 68, and it was still trying to run the heat pump even though it was in the single freaking digits outside). I finally took Nest off the wall and manually shorted the aux heat on - I didn't want the house to get any colder while we "troubleshooted" it, and Nest was just refusing, no matter how I adjusted it, to turn the aux heat on and warm the house back up.

* Other times, it would use AUX when it doesn't need it. It was 37 outside once, and nest was burning AUX like crazy when the heat pump was having no problems keeping up. I had a nearly $400 power bill last January. Now, in fairness, it was very cold that month, but Nest using AUX when it shouldn't was a big contributor.

* For instance, you can't directly set the AUX lockout any lower than 35 degrees (more on this in a minute) when, for my house, it probably needs to be around 26. You can also only set certain things from the thermostat itself.

* They are very difficult to troubleshoot. How do you manually turn on AUX heat to test if it's even working at all? As far as I can tell, you can't! The only way we were able to test it is to take the thing off the wall and manually short the wires together (and, of course, it worked fine).

This is not some weird setup either. It's a standard heat pump with electric heat strips for aux heat, that's only about 4 years old. Where I live, this is the absolute most common form of heating. Because I can take the thermostat off the wall and short the wires together to turn aux on (and because I've had two different HVAC contractors check my system), I'm fairly certain the problem is not my HVAC system.

The biggest problem was, after three times of waking up to a cold house, I had a very difficult time trust them. I had an infant in the house, and for something that I'm not supposed to have to think about, I was spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about.

So at one point I replaced one of them with a Honeywell (not the Lyric, one of the touchscreen models). And it worked fine for the rest of winter and was much less crazy to deal with, but once summer rolled around the Honeywell wouldn't turn my air conditioning on! In troubleshooting it, we found that the Honeywell was defective and wasn't putting enough voltage to activate the reversing valve. So the heat pump was still running.

So I ended up putting the Nest back on for the summer, but spent a lot of time reading the Nest forums. Apparently problems with AUX heat are SUPER common with Nests (just Google "nest aux heat" to see tons of complaints).

There's a hack that that you can go through (detailed here: https://community.nest.com/ideas/1144#comment-7150) that allows you to set the lockout to a lower temperature. Which I did eventually set to 26. And, sidenote, I really hope they don't close this hole, because a lot of people are relying on it.

So far this winter, no problems. The hack seems to be holding. I haven't woken up to a cold house yet, and Nest is only using AUX when it should. And my power bills are running 25% less than the year before thanks to Nest not constantly using AUX heat.

I'm still very wary of them. If I wake up to a cold house again, they are going right in the trash can.

rgsteele• 11 years ago

They are very difficult to troubleshoot. How do you manually turn on AUX heat to test if it's even working at all? As far as I can tell, you can't! The only way we were able to test it is to take the thing off the wall and manually short the wires together (and, of course, it worked fine).

I don't own a Nest thermostat myself, but was browsing their blog out of curiosity after reading this story, and it sounds like the latest software update includes a System Test mode:

https://nest.com/ca/blog/2014/11/04/whats-in-the-4-3-softwar...

jacobheric• 11 years ago

I had exactly the same experience with my Nest thermostat. I think Nest's assertions about furnace compatibility are a marketing wash. The three support people I spoke to were explicitly disinterested in knowing the make and model of my furnace.

I appreciate the company's consumer electronics mindset, but they need to take the business of running HVAC systems more seriously.

My "dumb" thermostat is back on the wall and successfully running my heating system (to the schedule I've programmed it) as it's done for years.

hackbinary• 11 years ago

Most furnaces, perhaps all, in the Canada and the US use an 18V control circuit. Close the circuit, the furnace is on.

In the UK, the control circuit is on the mains; close the circuit, the furnace is on.

kennywinker• 11 years ago

I was a huge fan of the IDEA of the Nest Protect. The reality? Not so big a fan. I think they oversold it. It's still better than my old smoke detector in that the pre-alarm warning is fairly gentle, but I'm still getting on a chair to tap the "shut up" button. Wave-to-turn-off never worked for me even before they disabled it.

My brother bought one, while I was still in the honeymoon period of mine. His false alarmed constantly, and has since been removed.

brandon272• 11 years ago

Wow, that's a lot of alarms! I've got a 3000 sqft. house and it's only got 3. I guess you can never be too safe.

raldi23• 11 years ago

The current California fire code requires them all over the goddamn place.

CamperBob210• 11 years ago

The video looked like a preview for a new game where you run around Hogwarts collecting smoke alarms in a bucket.

stock_toaster• 11 years ago

Do you get extra points for finding the golden NEST?

Rapzid• 11 years ago

So this guy pretty much publicly admitted he knew his companies useless smoke alarm was going off at his home, but couldn't be bothered going home to sort it out? Poor neighbours indeed.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached.

mholt• 11 years ago

And Go's net/http package.

kentonv2• 11 years ago

And LiveJournal.

Shivetya3• 11 years ago

if meme, kill it with fire, wasn't more appropriate I don't when it would.

I do not use the nest protect but have had the joys of interlinked fire alarms where one suffered a bad battery but all of them decided to complain about it.

this was a wonderful video, wonder if its hit reddit yet. Silliness abounds there and its not the exposure you want your product to have. Reminds me of the story earlier today about smart homes

aerovistae2• 11 years ago

Jesus how fucking big is that dude's apartment

raldi23• 11 years ago

I'm gonna blow your mind here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House

aerovistae2• 11 years ago

I laughed

gibsonje• 11 years ago

I have multiple battery nest protects. I replaced "False alarm" alarms with them when my smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector had multiple 100% false alarms. The protects have not been activated by anything so far. The humidity that would set off my smoke detector before does not set off my protect. I've had no problems with my protects.

barney54• 11 years ago

I have a Nest thermostat and s Nest Protect. I'm s big fan of both. The Nest Protect has not been buggy for me. It has done the one thing I bought it for--not give us false alarms from the shower down the hall. Out previous smoke alarm would go off all the time from steam, but the Nest Protect hasn't. As the video shows, maybe we are just lucky!

metoosorta• 11 years ago

In other news, talented hacker Brad Fitzpatrick now available for hire.

thesomelioma2• 11 years ago

Sorry, Google doesn't work that way.

You're probably thinking of Apple.

aniket_ray• 11 years ago

Not sure why you were downvoted as opposed to OP but this thread is full of people who don't realize that Google is truly a place where employees are encouraged to speak up when things are bad. Frankly, organizations would never be able to fix their mistakes if their employees are censured when they speak up.

mrbill• 11 years ago

It seems like the majority of people who had problems with the Nest Thermostat in these comments had it hooked up to a heat pump system.

Mine is a first-gen, bought the instant they were available to the public, and it's been rock-solid for the past 3+ years. However, I only have a standard central air and central heat (gas furnace) setup here in Texas. Nothing complicated.

I've been debating the Protects myself, the battery operated ones.

snsr• 11 years ago

I've had a couple of battery-operated Nest Protects in the house for the past year or so - no problems or false alarms so far (thankfully no accidental fires either).

yoda_sl2• 11 years ago

Here is my personal experience with Nest Products overall:

- Own 3 thermostats: 1 at home and 2 at my wife Business

- 6 Nest Protect spread in different part of our home (aka master bedroom, hallway, kitchen,...)

The thermostats work fine and usually the only issues I have encountered were with Comcast or AT&T (wife Business) going down and the thermostat not every time able to reconnect automatically... Not a huge deal and overall happy with those. And checking our bills, over time I see some savings in electricity cost... And the big big plus is really being able to trigger the A/C during the summer hot days when our dogs are staying home, and we are not with them.

The Protect overall have been working as expected with the one in the kitchen kicking in often when we are cooking (previous smoke detectors in the kitchen have been doing the same so no surprise). At installation time one of the unit couldn't register, and after reaching out to Customer support got a replacement unit quickly which worked fine. 3 weeks ago out of the blue the Nest Protect in our master bed room started to do exactly the same thing as shown in the video but the alarm after a minute will end and the app was reporting the level of smoke going down... Except there was never any smoke at all... Since it did happen 3 days in a row and on the third day, I was there to witness it, I tried a few things without luck... Ended up removing the battery and again contacted a Nest support (glad that I know a few folks there so I didn't have to go to any phone diagnosis), and 2 days later got a replacement unit. Installed since then and problem didn't happen and the bad unit was returned.

My conclusion: the thermostat is almost rock solid except for flaky internet and doesn't always reconnect. The Protect are definitely more a v1 with still some glitch but still happy customer. I am not a huge fan that Google did acquire Nest and still have preferred Apple but I don't have too many complaints.

I do have too a bunch of Dropcam and again not really happy that they ended under Google control, but their camera are good.

rsync• 11 years ago

Your thermostat should not require internet. Fact.

yoda_sl2• 11 years ago

It is only required when I used it remotely... Manual works even with internet down

Steko2• 11 years ago

G-bots flagging it off the front page... that's HN for you.

jrockway6• 11 years ago

Seems unlikely. The author is a Google employee and mentions it in the post.

akhilcacharya2• 11 years ago

Not just any Google employee either!

Steko2• 11 years ago

What is the alternate explanation of the points / time / rank then?

And the upthread point about this being a Google employee seem to miss the actual content which is highly critical of Google. And there's absolutely a history of threads highly critical of Google getting flagged down on HN.

Sanddancer2• 11 years ago

I'm wondering how much testing Nest did with the photoelectrics in the smoke detector. A teardown [1] seems to show a rather simple design for the led and photodiode beam path, as well as both of those components having places for light to potentially leak in around the diode bases. Other detectors [2], [3], seem to have much more complicated beam paths, with baffles and such, as well as better shielding to ensure the sensitive components are well-protected. Given this, I can see how all the differences in tolerances can lead to gaps which lead to lots of false alarms.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Protect+Teardown/20057 [2] http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/publications/educatio... [3] http://st-nso-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us_product_test/05...

raldi23• 11 years ago

A teardown seems to show a rather simple design

Don't you usually want lifesaving devices to have simple designs? For example, scuba breathing regulators are famously reliable in part because there's very little to them. Same goes for the AK-47, though I suppose I'm getting off the "lifesaving" track now...

fencepost• 11 years ago

I don't want lifesaving devices to have simple designs, I want them to have designs sufficient and appropriate for the task at hand. "Reduced manufacturing cost by $0.25/unit" in a triple-digit-cost smoke detector is not something that I as a consumer care about.

Sanddancer2• 11 years ago

I'd argue overly simple. The nest, and the other detectors, both have baffles in them to block out light from the outside world. However, the Nest negates some of the benefits from this by having the LED shine against a piece of plastic at an angle fairly close to the photodetector. If that piece of plastic happens to be especially reflective, or if the photodiode and/or LED happen to be misaligned, it would be more likely to trigger false alarms. The baffles in the other detectors, on the other hand, are also used to ensure that the light from the LED gets nowhere near the photodiode unless light's being scattered by smoke. The Nest design works great in the lab, but when assembled en mass, hits a bunch of tolerance issues that leads to a more jittery product.

Perdition• 11 years ago

There is a difference between "being as simple as required to reliably function" and "being as simple as possible".

False activations of things like alarms are dangerous because it conditions people to ignore the alarm or react slowly.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I think he meant naive. We all want the simplest design possible that is correct, fault tolerant, etc etc.

revelation• 11 years ago

But it isn't simple?

Look at that circuit board for gods sake, that's probably 6+ layers and apparently required custom gaskets around crucial components. If you consider the device as a whole, it is not simple at all.

That's kind of the crucial point, too. A smoke alarm can only be considered simple when everything on the path from smoke detector to alarm is simple, and that's not the case here. Which makes this seem like a case of not getting the basics right.

milesf• 11 years ago

My guess is Portal 3 will have these everywhere, with GLaDOS repeatedly uttering "can't be hushed here".

kubiiii• 11 years ago

I was looking for a portal reference. Definitely reminds me of glados & stupid turrets.

cxseven• 11 years ago

There's a general pattern of trying to dumb things down to a simple, inflexible interface, too often with half-baked "AI" bolted on. Good products still need attentive human supervision.

I installed Insteon motion detectors and webcams after a robbery, but the included software was such undependable and inflexible garbage that I replaced it all with a simple Misterhouse-based Perl script that sends texts via email.

If I see another tech product ad aimed at millenials featuring bright easter colors and indiepop music pitched by Steve Jobs wannabes who are unable to get any angry nerds to make their products actually work, I might snap.

By the way, the other HN article about dumb smart homes is a good accompaniment to this. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043524 )

jmspring2• 11 years ago

I continually come back to the thought that typical consumer software practices - be it games, apps, cloud services, etc - where you iterate quickly and don't always work out the bugs or design scales well to things like Nest protect, etc. For me, anything that ends up in a consumer home device should be solid from the time it is purchased and not require software updates to work right.

This leads to another concern of mine -- are places like fb, apple, Google, etc. capable of creating stable v1 products for the home.

With Nest, the initial thermostat seemed to work well. Original Dropcam works well. There have been questions since the acquisition of both companies.

smoyer• 11 years ago

I agree ... I was an embedded engineer for many years and we knew that once we released a product to production, it would kill the company if 100k of them in the field had to be replaced.

jmspring2• 11 years ago

One thing I've noticed with embedded code bases, some can be quite elegant and tight, have a level of fail safe/resiliency, etc. Some, reboot the device on error is your friend.

It is always hard after spending time in larger systems going back to and doing some code archaeology to see if something that seems off is the right thing or just what it seems like -- needs cleaning up.

Animats• 11 years ago

If the smoke detector function is having false alarms, this should be reported to Underwriters Laboratories, the tech arm of the fire insurance industry. Here's the report form.

http://ul.com/offerings/market-surveillance/

The NEXT smoke detector has UL approval number UTGT.S25414. That means UL actually tested the thing. But they may not be testing adequately for electrical noise on the power side, because, until now, smoke detectors were simple electrically and insensitive to power problems.

So report problems to UL. They take fire safety device failures very seriously.

moe• 11 years ago

I can not believe someone went out of their way to put a spoken "Can not be hushed" response into those things.

Just what you need in a panic situation with a fire in your house; your smoke alarm playing the smart-ass, at 85 decibels.

icebraining• 11 years ago

Like others have pointed out, it cannot be hushed by law. So what is it supposed to do? Simply not reacting to the button press seems even worse to me.

tacojuan• 11 years ago

Hahaha, oh my god the last 2 minutes of that video is fucking hilarious. Looks like a mega64 skit.

hartator• 11 years ago

"unhushable pieces of crap" I won't be happy to make a check to an employee that speak of the company work this way.

shoegumfoot• 11 years ago

Perhaps it tells you something about how strongly the employee feels about the company's work that he is willing to say something like this in public. For such a big problem, firing the employee won't make it go away.

georgemcbay• 11 years ago

The (sadly uncommon, but proper) fix for this isn't to silence the employee, but rather to fix the piece of crap you are selling so that it isn't a piece of crap anymore.

59nadir• 11 years ago

In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached.
And Go's net/http package.
And LiveJournal.
And Gearman.
And OpenID.

Working at Google and having done these things, I don't think he has to worry about it. They weren't comp products either, since he spent his own money on them.

Nest Protect is a terrible buggy product

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