SAFE & SOUND
Not just smart, but aware — how to equip your home with devices that are ready for any eventuality
Self–preservation is a universal core instinct of every living organism on the planet, from the top of the intellectual tree down to single–celled bacteria. If you’re building yourself a smart home, that’s something you should absolutely have in mind. A smart home that doesn’t have the sense to understand when there’s something wrong with your living space is, at least within this somewhat strained analogy, dumber than an amoeba.
Such sensing doesn’t even have to be an extra — it could be the core feature of your smart home. You can completely sidestep things like smart assistants or fancy lighting if they’re not your sort of thing, and just use the ever–growing litany of tools available to invisibly make your home safer. And we’re not just talking about security here, that’s a topic (mostly) for another day. What about fire, flood, wind, acts of God — or even acts of dog? And what about those dangers you can’t see?
Smart smoke detectors are, naturally, first on the list in terms of immediate priority. The Nest Protect ($119) is probably the most prominent of these, and it’s very clever. Like many smoke alarms, it networks itself with others in your home, meaning an alert from one is passed top–to–bottom, alerting those in all rooms that you’ve burnt the toast. It does not, though, go hell–for–leather in an instant, preferring instead to tell you what the problem is before sounding a loud alarm; it’s sensible enough to know the difference between charred toast and a blazing inferno — and you can hush it with your voice using Google Assistant.
UP IN THE AIR
The great benefit a smart smoke alarm has over its dumb brethren, even radio–interlinked alarms, is distance. Knowing there’s a problem when you’re not at home is priceless. Nest isn’t the only example out there: First Alert offers, at least in some markets, both Z–Wave and Alexa–equipped smoke alarms. The latter, the Onelink Safe & Sound, lives up to its title by including a highquality speaker for your music and smart alerts, which is a nice extra touch.
Be careful, though, with the way you choose to communicate with something like a smoke alarm. Setting up a custom routine with a Z–Wave device hooked into an online service might seem tempting for tech experimenters but IFTTT and the like can be unreliable and slow. Getting the alert three minutes after it’s happened will do more harm than good. Stick with something on a solid platform, use that platform, and be aware that nothing is guaranteed.