During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated. This could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire. We identified this problem ourselves and are not aware of any customers who have experienced this, but the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me and I want to address it immediately.
We feel that the best and safest thing to do is to immediately disable the Nest Wave feature to resolve the issue and remove any safety concerns. While we fix Nest Wave, we have also halted sales of all new Nest Protect alarms to ensure no one buys an alarm that needs an immediate update.
I did like the waving option, especially as I have high ceilings, but if they have found in certain circumstances it has a negative effect, then this is positive.
Truth be told I used to wave at my old smoke alarms when the toaster smoked to much and that would clear the small amount ofsmoke away to shut the siren off
Reading their posts, I got the feeling that they will switch it back on again, maybe they will configure it to ask for the ‘wave’ to be confirmed of something first.
This loss is not a biggy to me, but it would be good if they can bring it back, as it was a nice to have.
Too bad they don’t have an API to silence the alarm (like from a scene controller).
I just got a android device, but if I didn’t have that there would be now way. Pretty bad interface design. Now that Google has aquired, probably no Windows apps (phone or Win8) either.
I don’t own one, but I was under the impression that the “wave to cancel” feature worked in conjunction with a voice prompt. For instance “Smoke detected. I am about to sound the alarm.”, then you walk over and wave. If so I am not sure how there could be false disarms from random movements in the room. Maybe they could just add another confirmation message and wave, like “Confirm alarm cancellation”, wave, “Cancelled”?
edit: I hope they don’t replace it with the clapper.
Just out of curiosity, I know there’s a separate thread on adding Nest plugin for the Vera, but one thing would definitely be cool would be to incorporate the Nest Protect motion sensor and put it into good HA use since it’s already wired.
I wonder if this could be part of the whole Google HA thing though, incorporating that with Google Now… keep your phone in your pocket and you can voice activate everything. “Ok Google Now, turn on living room lights”
Suppose you just caught fire and happened to be falling around underneath the sensor (trying to put yourself out) and you disarm the alarm…[/quote]
I suppose you wait for the second confirmation prompt and hold still long enough for the alarm to sound :P. I guess if you are on fire you could consider yourself a smoke detector, but yes in larger homes I wouldn’t want to be stuck burning to death in the basement while the party continued on upstairs 8). The feature made sense and was a one of the only reasons I would consider buying one so I hope they are able to “fix” it.