On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 9:19 PM Sean Donelan <s...@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-monoxide-alarm-plus-weather-alerts
*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
