THE VIDEO SHELF · smart smoke alarm usability
Nest Protect is a terrible buggy product
Brad Fitzpatrick records himself struggling to silence a set of first-generation Nest Protect smoke alarms that keep beeping and triggering one another.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN cites it as the famous example of how over-clever smart-home devices can fail at something as basic as a smoke alarm.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Brad Fitzpatrick
- Topic
- smart smoke alarm usability
- Format
- comedy
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 17
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2015–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
In line with this is the classic "It Can't Be Hushed Here" Nest bug video, by Brad Fitzpatrick from last year: [VIDEO] [Warning: contains extremely annoying Nest smoke detectors beeping. So prepare to lower your volume] Brad looks very annoyed and it was no fun …
rdtsc on Hacker News · 2016-01
In Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold(googler, opinions are my own) I honestly like bradfitz's youtube video the best to show the Nest Protect (the smoke alarm) issues[0]. They have since fixed these issues, as this was the gen one protect. For your #2 (no insider knowledge), that looks like people's …
kyrra on Hacker News · 2020-08
In Google to buy 6.6% stake in ADT in home security push
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.