The days of flicking tea towels at overzealous smoke alarms could be over with the launch of a new "intelligent" device which claims to be able to tell the difference between burning toast and a genuine house fire, and can be switched off by waving at it. Invented by one of the creators of Apple's iPod, Nest Protect combines a traditional smoke alarm, which is triggered when it detects the poor visibility caused by smoke, with a host of other sensors including heat, light, activity and ultrasonic detectors and a detector for deadly carbon monoxide gas.
Nest Protect differentiates between types of smoke, and can give a heads-up warning if there is just a small amount of smoke, perhaps caused by a toaster. The alarm can be silenced by waving at it, which is picked up by gesture detectors and saves the need for hitting it with a broom or flicking with a tea towel. If the problem escalates, Nest Protect moves to a 85 decibel horn and instructions to leave the building immediately and to call the fire brigade. The manufacturer has designed Nest Protect fire alarms to be wirelessly interconnected, which means a problem in one room would sound an alert throughout the house.
The alarm is the brainchild of Tony Fadell, who was part of the team at Apple that created the iPod and iPhone. Known as "the father of the iPod", Fadell has created 300 patents for consumer technology, and began exploring energy-efficient domestic technologies when he left Apple in 2008. True to Silicon Valley form, Fadell started Nest in a Palo Alto garage in 2010 with a former Apple colleague, Matt Rogers.
Nest claims that one in eight houses in the UK have a broken smoke alarm. "Every time a smoke alarm cries wolf, we trust it a little less, and then – in a moment of frustration – we rip the batteries out to stop the beeping. And that leaves us and our families at risk," said Fadell, who is Nest's chief executive officer.
Source: The Guardian
