Nest has apparently halted sales of its Nest Protect Smoke Detector this morning until the company can resolve an issue with the device, that has the Wave feature of the alarm unintentionally turning on, which when activated, deactivates the alarm system alerts that the device is made for. The companies CEO Tony Fadell issued a statement to device owners via online this morning warning them of the problem. In light of the issue the company has issued a stop of sales, and all current owners will end up having their devices wave feature deactivated until a software update can be pushed out to the Nest Protect alarms. The idea to have the alarm disabled when a person waves their hand in front of it is a great one, because smoke alarms can all too often go off when there isn’t any real danger. The most common response in this case is to disable the alarm by taking out the batteries or dismantling it, but as Nest points out that doesn’t make us any safer.
However, if the device is malfunctioning in this sense it serves just as little purpose as actually removing the alarm in the first place. Nest is predicting that it could be a few months before Wave is fixed, and until that time they have suggested a number of options that users should make note of and pay attention to, so that they don’t find themselves in a situation where Wave turns off the alarm when they really need it. Tony Fadell has mentioned that they at Nest had discovered this issue, and luckily it sounds like no one has experienced any problems as a result of the Wave features unintentional activation. He points out that if you have a Nest Protect device, that you should connect it up to your nest account via wifi so that Nest can remotely deactivate Wave.
For those that want to buy a Nest Protect, as we stated above all sales are halted for the time being. If you have a Nest Protect and have no way to connect it up to wifi for the Wave deactivation, Nest recommends that you discontinue use of the Nest Protect immediately and they will issue a refund which you can get by going here. It’s good that Nest caught this quickly before it became a really serious problem or before anyone was hurt as a result. Although sales of the Nest Protect Smoke Alarm have been halted for now, the Nest Smart Thermostat is still available and can be purchased.
http://youtu.be/QXp-LYBXwfo