Nest Protect: making your smoke detector smarter!
Technology doesn’t stop surprising us, but there are so many devices we use on a daily basis that haven’t evolved in a long time. Take the smoke detector as an example – it notices smoke and makes gut-wrenching sounds we all hate. Can we make smoke detectors better with modern technology? We sure can, and that is exactly what Next is trying to accomplish with the Protect smart smoke detector.
Nest should sound like a familiar brand to most of you. They are the creators of the Nest Thermostat, a smart device that helps you keep your home in good temperature. With the Nest Protect, Nest Labs is now revolutionizing fire security by making a smoke detector with much more features and less annoying discrepancies.
We all hate smoke detectors, right? For many reasons. They are way too loud and annoying, which would be ok for security, but most times they go off because of cooking. I hear my smoke detector’s alarm about 3 times a week, but my house has never actually been on fire. Nest Protect solves this and even manages to make the smoke detector much more helpful.
Nest Protect features
- High-quality smoke and carbon monoxide alarm: Detects heat, CO, and smoke.
- Heads-Up: It won’t just blast a cringing noise. The Protect gives you a “heads up” if the smoke levels are not dangerous.
- Nest Wave: After the heads up goes into effect, you can simply wave at the Protect to let it know it is all good. (it was just a burnt bagel).
- Mobile notifications: Receive low-battery alerts, Heads Up and emergency alarm notifications on your smartphone or tablet. In an emergency, the What to Do feature will remind you of recommended actions and give you one-button access to an emergency phone number.
- Nightly Promise: Nest Protect shows you its sensors and batteries are working with a quick green glow after you turn off the lights so low-battery chirps don’t rattle your dreams.
- Pathlight: The nest’s LED light can work as a night light when it’s dark.
- Vocal alarms: According to a study by Victoria University, children can sleep through beeping smoke alarms. So in addition to alarm sounds, Nest Protect uses female Voice Alarms to help wake sleeping children in case of emergency.
- Wireless interconnect: If you have more than one Nest Protect, they connect so you’ll hear alarms from all Nest Protects in your home, even if the danger is in only one room.
These are some great features for a smoke detector. I especially like the idea of the “heads up” and “Nest wave”. Getting notifications on your phone will also be very helpful for those weekend trips when the house is alone. And the fact that these smoke detectors connect to WiFi make for a great home security network.
You can get the battery version as well as the plugged one. Both cost $129 and you can pre-order them straight from Nest’s website. Are you getting one?
