On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 9:19 PM Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
A company already made a combination smoke alarm/weather radio. Halo Smart Labs went out of business earlier this year. https://www.smartthings.com/products/halo-smart-labs-halo-smoke-and-carbon-m...
*click* *buy* Thanks for the link. :)
A $120+ niche silicon valley product is great for the nerds. Whats the business case for everyone else?
I know plenty of non-nerds that live in tornado and hurricane-prone locations in the US that could also use a nice fire alarm/CO detector in their house.
What's the business case for reaching 126 million households, with a product that is afforable or already part of something they already have.
Sure--I totally agree. But we don't build smoke detectors into our cell phones because that's not a very good use case. And I'm not aware of weather alerts being broadcast to cell phones without having an app installed, and it's unreliable. (Although some already have AM/FM radios in them...)
More people own Amazon smart speakers than NEST thermostats. Amazon product people have told me there is no demand for emergency alerts in its Alexa product.
Likewise, I've asked Google developers. They said the same thing about adding emergency alerts to their Google assistant product.
Maybe so. I never received a survey. Sounds like they just aren't interested in developing a 'boring' feature.
Fewer than 5% of households buy weather radios.
That's...surprising to me. Any chance the majority of those 5% are in hurricane or tornado areas? *wonders what smoke alarm coverage is*
If you know that Google or Amazon plan to add emergency alerts to its smart assistant products, that would be great news. But so far, their product people have been very clear, they see no business case for supporting government emergency alerts on their "smart" products.
The only down-side I see to that is that my assistant products lose power immediately when the grid fails. My smoke alarm is wired, but it has a battery backup. Thanks for the info. -A