Ever had the misfortune of scaring your family with a smoke detector going off as a false alarm? Have you ever been on the cusp of falling asleep before a big day of work only to have the chirp from your device's low battery alarm force you to get out of bed, grab the step stool and replace them?
Tony Fadell, a gadget maker who helped designed the iPod and iPhone while he was employed by Apple, is counting on his latest innovation to make people rethink the smoke detector and prove it can be sleek, smart and no longer annoying.
Fadell launched Nest Labs Inc. as a startup in 2010 in an attempt to infuse homes with more of the high-tech functions that smartphones are capable of. The company has 270 employees and has generated a lot of money from investors such as Google's venture-capital arm and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm with a long record of backing innovative ideas, reports the Associated Press via ABC News.
"We want to take the unloved products in your own home and bring them to life in a way that makes them beautiful," Fadell said while showing off the Nest Protect. "There has been very little innovation with smoke detectors in the past 35 years and now we think we have found a way to make them less annoying."
The device, called "Nest Protect" is the second product from the company. Besides detecting dangerous levels of smoke, it can also detect potentially lethal levels of carbon monoxide. This could boost the device's appeal in the growing number of states that require homes to have some kind of device to detect dangerous carbon monoxide levels.
The Nest Protect is equipped with a variety of sensors or detecting heat, smoke, carbon monoxide, light and motion. It is programmed to give its warnings in a soothing spoken word voice rather than the annoying sound of an alarm. This will help people remain calm and receive information from the device while they determine if the cause of the alarm is dangerous or just a little extra smoke from the kitchen or steam from the shower.
Nest Protect will go on sale next month for $129 in more than 5,000 stores in the U.S., Canada and U.K. This is a little more expensive than regular smoke detectors, but those are significantly less sophisticated. The device will be sold in stores in white but a black version that runs on your homes power rather than batteries is available via Nest Inc.'s website.
