Nest Protect Rethinks Home Safety

Nest Protect Rethinks Home Safety

The original Nest Thermostat woke up a sleepy home improvement category, and now the company is grabbing attention again with its new combo fire alarm and carbon monoxide detector. The Nest Protect shows what can happen when smart engineers and designers rethink how products should work. Instead of being standalone devices, Protect alarms communicate with each other as well as with Nest thermostats. For example, if Protect detects a high level of carbon monoxide, it notifies Nest to turn off the home furnace until the source can be identified. If an alarm goes off in one area of the home, Protect wakes up its brethren to ensure everyone is warned in time to get to safety. 

And in a truly brilliant move, Nest Labs put an early warning system called “Heads Up” into Protect, so that the alarm will tell you, in a human voice, if it detects smoke (and where). Then if it turns out to be a false alarm—maybe your significant other burned the meat loaf again—you can simply wave at Protect to turn off the alert before the sirens start.