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Comment by krishnakanthc | Hacker News Reader

I agree with original comment about the hand wave to dismiss feature. It shouldn't be made easy to dismiss an alarm.

At first, it seems like an awesome feature when you know the source of fire. e.g your kitchen.

But consider CO alarm cases. Top 10 reviews in Amazon for a Smoke alarm + CO detector talk about how CO alarm saved their lives. Most of the reviewers at first thought it was a false alarm. If it was Nest they would have "easily" dismissed it and probably died.

But that said, other features like motion detector, night light, syncing with Nest thermostat to shutoff the heater, cool design, make it a good buy. As long as I don't dismiss all alarms by default.

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> if it was Nest they would have "easily" dismissed it and probably died.

Did you read the description at all? You can only dismiss warnings not alarms. You cannot dismiss life threatening situations.

I did. Maybe I missed the fine print. It seems like you can dismiss warning and alarms.

"You can wave your hand in front of Protect to dismiss the beeping — essentially, like pressing snooze on an alarm. As long as the situation doesn’t worsen, then your smoke alarms will never sound."

"For severe issues, Protect may opt to bypass the "heads up" warning and simply sound the alarm"

Still it doesn't say that this hand wave feature will stop working in these severe situations.

Ofcourse, I am sure they will iron things like this out before shipping.

http://support.nest.com/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-s...

Most detectors only have one sound.

It seems that the Nest will specifically tell you with words that it has detected CO, so you'll listen.

I wouldn't be surprised if the CO detection can'd be dismissed since you would never really want to dismiss it (unlike smoke).

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but all combined CO/smoke detectors I have ever owned have a distinctive alarm for CO. Usually a spoken alert warning of CO.

Well, the nest detector apparently has a voice that can say "I've detected Carbon Monoxide"

One would hope that Nest would deal with dismissals differently depending on what is detected and at what concentrations.

Indeed. a lot of this thread seems to be assuming that the makers are morons who didn't consult anyone, and have obviously made a product that is unusable and dangerous.

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