“Girl, are you a fire detector? Because you are so loud and annoying!” Hopefully that joke makes less sense in a couple of months now that smart thermostat manufacturer Nest’s upcoming project aims to reinvent the way we think about those pesky little smoke detectors everyone has hanging on their walls.
You’re familiar with it – its incessantly obnoxious beeps, the oversensitivity to the slightest bit of smoke, the pace in which you have to climb on a stool to take that smoke detector down and remove the battery to keep it from waking the neighbors. According to a report by Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin, sources close to Nest say the company is developing a smart smoke detector that’ll give it that next-gen quality, such as Internet connectivity, sleek design, and a subscription service that alerts you remotely if the device detects smoke or fire.
“One person said the device could communicate with the Nest thermostat, giving it a longer battery life by eliminating the need for it to have its own battery-draining wi-fi chip,” Lessin writes. “We also hear that Nest has discussed features like the ability to silence the alarm by waving a hand in front of it and the ability to detect carbon monoxide.”
Of course, all of this is rumored at the moment, but we’re not surprised smoke detectors are up next in the smart home realm. Nearly everything else is becoming Web-connected anyway, it was only a matter of time. What we are excited about, however, that if Nest truly makes a new smoke detector, it’s going to look damn good and hopefully be much less annoying that the one we’ve all come to know and despise. Whether it will actually save your household any money or energy is another question, since smoke detectors generally don’t take up that much power anyway.
The Nest smoke detector project has no estimated price or product rendering, but sources say the device might be available as soon as later this year.
Image Credit: Flickr.com/sundazed