Saturday 5 April 2014

Google Halt Sales of Hi-tech Fire Alarm Due To Safety Concerns

Google-owned Nest has halted sales of its Nest Protect fire alarm after the firm found out that users could accidentally disable the device by waving their arms.
The company said the feature, Nest Wave, which allows users to wave their arms to deactivate the alarm, could be activated unintentionally.
In a blog post, the company said current users should disable Wave.
Google bought Nest Labs for $3.2bn (£1.9bn) in January.

The firm, which is primarily known for its hi-tech thermostat, launched in the United Kingdom this week after strong sales in the US.

Self-discovery
Nest chief executive Tony Fadell emphasized "We identified this problem ourselves and are not aware of any customers who have experienced this, but the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me and I want to address it immediately.
"We're enormously sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue."

All current users of Nest Protect who have their device connected to the internet via wi-fi will have the feature disabled automatically.
He said that all current owners of Nest Protect alarms would be offered refunds, and added that he thought a fix could take between two and three months.

Culled from:
BBC

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