[carrigan]

The Nest Protect adds several hardware components that a traditional smoke detector doesn't have, including an ambient light sensor, a distance/motion sensor, a multicolor LED, and WiFi. If your only problem with the current smoke detectors out there is the chirp, then it can be solved by adding just the light sensor and LED, which is not a large cost addition. The additional cost of adding networking hardware, creating a protocol for these to talk to each other as well as the thermostat, and creating a mobile app just to configure the nightlight is what really drives the price so high here.

Hopefully the innovative ideas that they are using for conveying that a battery is low or stopping the alarm from going off when cooking make it into other designs. Quite frankly I don't see the benefit added from networking my smoke detectors.

[rsync]

Exactly. I have no interest in adding any more computer networks or nodes to my home, nor do I wish to provide Internet services on public IPs, etc. I don't need the complexity in my life, nor do I need the attack surface (nor the trade of legacy annoyances for modern annoyances).

BUT, I do need a smoke detector that doesn't make me want to kill myself every time I interact with it - I already have printers for that. Here's hoping there's an easy way to completely disable all networking on these devices...

[X-Istence]

Don't set it up on Wifi ... the devices will talk to each other over ZigBee as far as I can tell.

[telephonetemp]

Is there anyone out there trying to give printers the Nest treatment?