<story><title>Nest introduces their Smoke Detector</title><url>http://nest.com/smoke-co-alarm/life-with-nest-protect/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>Ambulances don&amp;#x27;t play cello sonatas. Minefields aren&amp;#x27;t marked with rainbows and kittens. The user interface for current smoke detectors is very thoughtful. It is based upon experience.&lt;p&gt;When alarms don&amp;#x27;t alarm, people often die.&lt;p&gt;When alarms are ignored, people often die.&lt;p&gt;Making obnoxious sounds is a feature not a bug. The inconvenience of being kept awake by a smoke alarm battery tends to pale in comparison to the inconvenience of being kept dead.</text></item><item><author>ds9</author><text>We all recognize the importance of fire safety, but there is no excuse for the design of smoke and CO detectors to be so painfully obnoxious.  If it motivates homeowners to disable them, it is a bad design, isn&amp;#x27;t this obvious?&lt;p&gt;When one of these things has a low battery, it chirps intolerably - but only every 30 minutes!! So when this happens at night, and there are several of them in the residence, you are literally kept awake half the night, waiting by one after another, just to figure out which one needs a battery.&lt;p&gt;I could go on, but all this is familiar. All they need is some thoughtful UI, and the Nest model looks excellent in this respect.  It does not compromise safety - it will still go off if a human doesn&amp;#x27;t interact with it right away.  It has other flaws (wifi required? no thanks; and probably expense) but this is an improvement over the &amp;quot;dumb&amp;quot; models.</text></item><item><author>brudgers</author><text>Read about deaths in dwelling fires here:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usfa.fema.gov&amp;#x2F;downloads&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;v14i3.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s more here:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/reports/residential_structures.shtm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usfa.fema.gov&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;reports&amp;#x2F;residential_stru...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;When owners of commercial buildings disable life safety features, it is not uncommon for the Fire Marshal to require a fire watch (trained personnel on site walking around 24 hours a day) until the system is operating correctly.&lt;p&gt;A residential smoke alarm system without a battery as backup power source is not operating correctly[1]. A smoke alarm in or near the kitchen is incorrectly placed if it is producing frequent false alarms[2].&lt;p&gt;In the time it takes to download and install a smartphone app, one can probably replace all their smoke detector batteries - NFPA recommends changing them twice a year when clocks get reset for daylight savings time.&lt;p&gt;These are first and foremost alarms not detectors because there is no other annunciator device. Using the device in the way the manufacturer is suggesting - i.e disabling portions of it&amp;#x27;s alarm system - is how people die in dwellings.&lt;p&gt;Over-riding their fucking primary purpose for the fucking sake of fucking occupant convenience  violates the fucking basic  principles of fucking life safety.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t disruption, it&amp;#x27;s fucking stupidity.&lt;p&gt;[1]Outside of retrofit applications, smoke alarms are required by the National Electrical Code [NFPA 70] to be hardwired and when located in a room used for sleeping on an arc-fault protected circuit. The battery is for backup.&lt;p&gt;[2]Though the kitchen is the most common location for a fire in dwellings, kitchen fires are among the least likely to be fatal because cooking usually is attended and occurs during waking hours. Many building codes also require a fire extinguisher to be located in the kitchen for new construction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>impendia</author><text>&amp;gt; Making obnoxious sounds is a feature not a bug.&lt;p&gt;Making them only once every thirty minutes is a bug not a feature.&lt;p&gt;I was awakened in the middle of the night by one of my smoke detectors beeping once because its batteries were low. But it stopped beeping, and did not flash or give any other noticeable indication that its batteries were low. There was no way to determine which smoke detector it was. (Or at least, none that I could figure out at 2:00 am.)&lt;p&gt;Any possible action was useless (I had no batteries handy), so I went to bed.&lt;p&gt;Thirty minutes later, same thing again. Awakened, couldn&amp;#x27;t tell by which smoke detector. I could think of nothing to do other than to remove all the batteries in all of my smoke detectors.&lt;p&gt;Bad UI.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nest introduces their Smoke Detector</title><url>http://nest.com/smoke-co-alarm/life-with-nest-protect/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>Ambulances don&amp;#x27;t play cello sonatas. Minefields aren&amp;#x27;t marked with rainbows and kittens. The user interface for current smoke detectors is very thoughtful. It is based upon experience.&lt;p&gt;When alarms don&amp;#x27;t alarm, people often die.&lt;p&gt;When alarms are ignored, people often die.&lt;p&gt;Making obnoxious sounds is a feature not a bug. The inconvenience of being kept awake by a smoke alarm battery tends to pale in comparison to the inconvenience of being kept dead.</text></item><item><author>ds9</author><text>We all recognize the importance of fire safety, but there is no excuse for the design of smoke and CO detectors to be so painfully obnoxious.  If it motivates homeowners to disable them, it is a bad design, isn&amp;#x27;t this obvious?&lt;p&gt;When one of these things has a low battery, it chirps intolerably - but only every 30 minutes!! So when this happens at night, and there are several of them in the residence, you are literally kept awake half the night, waiting by one after another, just to figure out which one needs a battery.&lt;p&gt;I could go on, but all this is familiar. All they need is some thoughtful UI, and the Nest model looks excellent in this respect.  It does not compromise safety - it will still go off if a human doesn&amp;#x27;t interact with it right away.  It has other flaws (wifi required? no thanks; and probably expense) but this is an improvement over the &amp;quot;dumb&amp;quot; models.</text></item><item><author>brudgers</author><text>Read about deaths in dwelling fires here:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usfa.fema.gov&amp;#x2F;downloads&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;v14i3.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s more here:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/reports/residential_structures.shtm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usfa.fema.gov&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;reports&amp;#x2F;residential_stru...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;When owners of commercial buildings disable life safety features, it is not uncommon for the Fire Marshal to require a fire watch (trained personnel on site walking around 24 hours a day) until the system is operating correctly.&lt;p&gt;A residential smoke alarm system without a battery as backup power source is not operating correctly[1]. A smoke alarm in or near the kitchen is incorrectly placed if it is producing frequent false alarms[2].&lt;p&gt;In the time it takes to download and install a smartphone app, one can probably replace all their smoke detector batteries - NFPA recommends changing them twice a year when clocks get reset for daylight savings time.&lt;p&gt;These are first and foremost alarms not detectors because there is no other annunciator device. Using the device in the way the manufacturer is suggesting - i.e disabling portions of it&amp;#x27;s alarm system - is how people die in dwellings.&lt;p&gt;Over-riding their fucking primary purpose for the fucking sake of fucking occupant convenience  violates the fucking basic  principles of fucking life safety.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t disruption, it&amp;#x27;s fucking stupidity.&lt;p&gt;[1]Outside of retrofit applications, smoke alarms are required by the National Electrical Code [NFPA 70] to be hardwired and when located in a room used for sleeping on an arc-fault protected circuit. The battery is for backup.&lt;p&gt;[2]Though the kitchen is the most common location for a fire in dwellings, kitchen fires are among the least likely to be fatal because cooking usually is attended and occurs during waking hours. Many building codes also require a fire extinguisher to be located in the kitchen for new construction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scott_s</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re missing the point people are trying to make: what matters is how people &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; behave, not how they &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; behave. If the current design of smoke alarms causes people to disable them - irrespective of whether or not they &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; - then the design can be improved.</text></comment>