Hacker News Reader

Comment by ruswick | Hacker News Reader

I understand that conventional smoke detectors can be irritating, but I still don't see how an experience like that is worth an extra $110. I suppose the calculus is different for people with far more money, but for most people, I don't think that smoke detectors pose a large enough annoyance to warrant buying the Nest.

View on HN

If you want to know, remotely, if your house is burning down, you can spend $450 a year for a monitoring service and who knows how much for a system that dials them in case of alerts, or you can buy Nest.

I see this as priced against monitoring services and systems that phone them.

Compared to those, this is cheap.

Well, if your house is burning down, and you're not in it, there's not anything you can do anyway, and you finding out before you get home doesn't change anything, so that's not that useful.

Not true, you can call the fire department.

The problem is Nest doesn't connect to a central monitoring center (as far as I can tell) and many insurance companies require central monitoring. I would love to have these, but I won't buy them if the insurance company won't sign off on them.

Consider that it happens regularly every couple of years, especially when you have multiple smoke alarms.

Then if you have high-ceilings it makes it much more difficult (have to go get a ladder in the middle of the night).

It will freak kids out, they're not fun to get back to bed.

The elderly or disabled might not be able to remove the battery or remove the alarm.

I'd say it's definitely a step in the right direction and in-line with Nests other product (probably much of the same hardware).

What's next for Nest? Lighting? Door locks? Security system?

We're long past the point where you should be replacing smoke alarm batteries at all.

Put in a lithium battery. The lithium battery will last for the entire 10-year life of the smoke alarm. Thus, you should only replace smoke alarms -- not the battery.

In fact, these days, they're selling smoke alarms with sealed non-replaceable lithium batteries. This prevents people from attempting to use an alarm past end-of-life, and thus getting a false sense of security.

Oh whatever LOL. It'll be marketed as lasting a decade and value engineered to only last a year. You don't increase profits by making things last longer. By being sealed and making it chirp you'll force people to buy another instead of simply unpluging the battery.

The problem with a nanny state is eventually people rebel. The future of smoke detection is high profits for mfgrs and residents will spend an hour their first day in new premises disabling and disconnecting the devices. The overall effect on safety will be a profound net decrease, although theoretically on paper we'll never be safer.

I seem to recall seeing my first lithium battery smoke detector back in the 90s. I certainly haven't bought a non-hardwired detector that wasn't one of the 10-year lithium battery type in the past decade. (You'd have to ask my electrician what he just installed in my renovated house, I haven't looked too closely at them yet.)

Haven't given me any problems. Haven't heard about them giving anyone else any problems. You seem to be dismissing something that already has a proven track record. Why is that?

They last much longer than a year. My dad has them in his house and he's had them a while now - the fire department in the area fit them for free.

How much did the loss of sleep last night cost the above poster in their job the next day? It isn't about how much money you have, it's about how valuable your time is.

My wife lost just as much sleep, and she makes more than I do.

Unless you're a freelancer/contractor, the loss of efficiency probably costs you nothing. It costs your employer, so maybe they should be funding your smoke detector?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com