So I purchased a Nest Protect yesterday, and I like the idea of being able to see alerts when away from home, and the clear voice is nice; however, I have some buyers remorse. The motion sensing doesn’t appear to work, so the path light feature is not working. It also really doesn’t detect what I need it to, that being natural gas. I should have figured this out before I purchased it, but I was unaware that CO2 detectors for the most part do not detect natural gas. We had a scare the other night and came home to an apartment filled with gas from the stove that was left on unlit. It was a very scary situation to say the least, so I rushed out and got the Nest Protect. Any input from home owners with natural gas would be much appreciated. It would be nice to monitor this when away from home.
That’s a cool device. Need to keep an eye on that one. I don’t; see any mention of an API, though, nor do I see it mentioned on their website - http://orvibo.com/kepler/index.html
Odd that your motion detection doesn’t work with the Nest Protects. I have a number of them around the house and they work beautifully. I ended up turning the lights up to high and have not had a single issue with them, even the ones on the 10ft ceilings. I use them near all the entries/exits and outside my bedroom door (for those midnight snack trips). I’d make sure they have the latest firmware (mine are running 2.0rc5).
As for the detection, how hard would it be to hook that binary sensor and do the necessary programming to make it work with that natural gas detector? Could it show a status like the protect (gas level okay) etc…
Off the top of my head, I would say pretty easy as long as Smartthings already handles binary (on/off) sensors (which seems like what a window sensor is):
Find the “all ok/power” led +/- and solder the binary sensor to that.
Hook the binary sensor to Smartthings so that you can see when the device is on and ok.
Then you set up a “Notify me when…” action to send you a push notification if the binary sensor turns off (which would indicate either a power failure, device unplug, or something is “not ok” - all of which are potential problems situations).
I haven’t done this, so it’s just an idea banging around at the moment, but maybe someone else has set up a similar on/off status type project?
Good idea. If only we could tap in to the actual natural gas levels that the device is reading. I reached out to Kepler about a release date and on api/smart things compatibility and am waiting on a response. Release date is scheduled sometime next year.