I’m slowly building up a smart wired home, so it’s sad when it’s dumb. Friday morning we got woken up by the house smoke alarm blaring. We have one of those new fancy homes where the smoke detectors are connected through wiring so that when one smoke detector goes off they all go off.
Walking into the hallway I hear the Nest Protect jabbering away “Smoke detected in the hallway!” I don’t see any smoke. I waved my hands rapidly under the Protect and nothing happened. We have high ceilings so I can’t reach it. I pull out my phone and check and the Nest app trying to silence it while my wife fiddles with the Nest Thermostat on the wall. Finally I go and grab the ladder, climb up, and hit the button on the Nest. “Alarm cannot be silenced.” Well that’s cute, isn’t it? Now what?
So I pulled the alarm off the ceiling and disconnected it. GLORIOUS! All the rest of the alarms in the house stop going on. “Smoke detected in the hallway!” Cute Nest Protect, real cute. A minute later, “Smoke clearning."
You know what would have been cute? If I had Nest Protects in all the rooms, because even disconnected it from the ceiling it would have still been WiFi connected to rest the thermostats and they would keep going off. Pull the battery you say? It’s a built-in rechargeable; there is no way to pull it.
I have a smart garage as well - I do get nervous from time to time that the garage is going to randomly open when were out of town. Knock on wood that it doesn’t.