Nest, for those unfamiliar, is a company by former Apple executive, Tony Fadell. The company has launched a smart thermostat and just last year, they launched Protect, which was a smart smoke detector. One of the features of Protect was the ability to wave your hand under it to turn it off in the event that it goes off accidentally, such as from food accidentally burnt or from your toaster.
However it seems that maybe the hand waving feature might be too sensitive, which led to Nest temporarily halting the sales of the Protect. Now it seems that the company has announced that the company has since started to issue recalls, according to a post on the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website. According to them, about 440,000 units will be recalled in total.
According to Nest’s co-founder, Tony Fadell, who issued a statement last month when sales were halted, “During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated.”
The good news is that the recall has not hampered Nest’s progress. In a statement issued to TechCrunch, a Nest spokesperson said, “Nothing has changed since our initial announcement last month and in fact, we’ll be bringing Nest Protect back on the market in a few weeks.” In the meantime current owners can rest assured that while the hand waving feature has been disabled, the Protect will continue functioning as it should and will monitor for increased levels of smoke and CO.
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