Safe and Sound

As everyone should, we have a smoke detector and change the battery on a regular basis. We know the smoke detector works because it goes off almost every time we cook dinner. Even when absolutely clean, a gas oven and stove top in an old house with no vent above the stove leads to a lot of false alarms. While I have long since removed the smoke detector in the kitchen (no joke: it was directly above the stove), we still have an over zealous smoke detector in the bedroom.

So, there’s been a lot of news about the Nest Protect recently. It’s a smoke & CO2 detector from the people that make the Nest Thermostat. Nest has just been purchased by Google for about $3.2 Billion. In case you were wondering, $3,200,000,000 is how much data about the temperature of everyone’s home is worth.

That said, I still love the idea of the thermostat.  Installing a Nest Thermostat was one of the first things we did after moving in and I gotta say we love it. In addition to its learning features, there’s nothing better than being able to remotely change the temperature on your way home from a vacation. Plus, when it’s too warm at night, changing the temp via a phone rather than getting out of bed is pretty convenient.

So when Nest released the Protect I was interested, but not sure if I was $125-interested. But every night around dinner time, as I tore the smoke detector off the wall, I would think, “I could just wave and the Nest would shut off.” And while I never recall trying to get the alarm to shut off while naked, I will confess that it would often sit on my desk with the battery removed for a couple days before I remembered to put it back up.

As is typical for us, Project A because Project B through F after a trip to the hardware store. Last night, we left for a socket wrench and came home with a bunch of electrical outlets and a Nest Protect.

Installing it was remarkable easy. The app walks you through the process and since we got the battery powered model, there was no concern about where to put it.  We moved it to the ceiling of the bedroom rather than on the wall over the door (the instructions have a bunch of information about the best placement). It took me longer to take down the old one than it did to put up the new one.

Since the Nest Protect works with the Nest Thermostat, I’m hoping having the Protect in the bedroom will help better manage the temperature throughout the house.

One of the coolest features (beyond keeping us alive), is the night light. When the room lights go off, the Nest Protect goes into a night light mode where it will detect movement and turn on a very subtle night light. Just enough to not stub a toe, but not bright enough to be disruptive.

24 hours in: The house is still standing and I can see where I’m going at night. It’s a win.