Nest only has a few products, but they’ve quickly become popular for a number of reasons. Nest products are connected thermostats and smoke alarms, both of which allow you to monitor and control from your smartphone or other internet-connected device. This sort of thing is amazing not only because it makes Nest a unique product, but because it’s simple and easy to use. The peace of mind offered by knowing your house is safeguarded and you’d be able to be notified of any fire or other issue is near priceless on its own, but what if something went wrong with the unit? Back in April we learned of a possible design flaw in the software for Nest that made it too easy to dismiss a smoke alarm by waving your arms in front of the unit instead of having to press a button to reset it when the alarm is going off. Nest quickly stopped sales and issued an update that turns this option off by default, but that was only the beginning of what had to happen.
While the obvious convenience of waving your arms instead of pressing the reset button is difficult to give up, Nest at least lets you opt back into the program if you’d like by enabling the setting on the device. Now the official recall of the product is underway, and owners of 440,000 units are now being instructed to connect the Nest Protect Smoke and CO2 Alarm to the Internet and let it take the update to disable the Nest Wave feature. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission also lists refund among the possible remedies for the problem, but doesn’t provide a way to gain a refund, leading us to think that might be a mistake. While most users likely have already received this update, this is the official recall notice and is supposed to provide more people with the information they need to get their product fixed. If you’ve got a Nest Protect Smoke and CO2 Alarm make sure to get it connected to the Internet so it can update right away, the Wave feature could cause problems and it’s just better to get it turned off. See the US CPSC link below for all the recall info.