Smoke alarm/CO detector recommendation, are the Nest devices any good?

The house we just bought needs new (and more) smoke alarms, and a new thermostat.

We've had a Nest in the last place and liked it. IIRC their smoke alarms integrate with the thermostat to turn off the furnace in case of an alarm. That might be almost enough for me to overlook that they're owned by Google. Does anybody here have about experiences with these devices, especially ones of our resident firefighters?

Otherwise I'll probably get a couple of Alexa-free ecobee thermostats and less smart smoke alarms. 

I go on alarm calls every day and I have yet to see any Nest detectors at all. Either that means that nobody around here has them yet, or they work well enough that they don’t trigger false alarms. 

In reply to Woody :

Thanks for the feedback, I had hoped you would see the post.

I've had the nest smoke and carbon monoxide detectors for about a year. No complaints

I'm inclined to give our Kiddes an anti-recommendation. Too many cooking false alarms, plus some non-cooking, WTF, false alarms. We've vacuumed them out per the maintenance instructions.

My wife called and got them to replace two of them that have been the worst, but I'm much, much less than thrilled.

I really hate the idea of putting random house stuff on the internet, but if it stops the false alarms... No, I don't think I can do it.

The S in IoT is for Security.

In reply to Ransom :

That's a cooking problem, not a smoke detector problem.

I have more detectors in my house than I can count, several are Kiddes, but none are in my kitchen or just outside the bathroom doors (shower steam).

I buy kidde smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.  That’s all I’ll do. Technically I work for the overarching company that owns them and my company discount is poor. Buying them from amazon is actually cheaper

make sure you change them every 10 years. 

In reply to Ransom :

I'm pretty aware as to how "good" most IoT security is. As much as I'm not a big fan of Google, I do have to say that I trust their security considerably more than the more common IoT applicances manufactured by the proverbial Mr Lee's Fortune Cookie and Shoddy Devices Manufacturting Co. Heck, I'm the guy who runs his Smart TVs and Tivos on a physically separated network from the main computers in the house, and built his own small firewall device...

Fueled by Caffeine said:

make sure you change them every 10 years. 

That's actually one of the big reasons for the original question - I suspect that the smoke detectors in the house are close to their expiration date, and for my taste there aren't enough of them anyway.

I just picked up a two pack of First Alert smoke detectors that have 10 year batteries installed. I put labels on them with their expiration date - done until 2028! 

I’m using a separate Kidde CO detector.  Seems to work ok.

As much as you may trust google, almost all nest devices are connected to the internet, and most have been hacked by the security community. I would never ever trust my life, or the lives of a loved one, to one. Get a Kiddie or FirstAlert, avoid the unproven brands. If you need the connectivity, buy both. 

I had a pair of them at my last house. No real complaints about them.

There may or may not be a picture of the last CR smoke detector test here.

Serious question since I'm a rube on the subject, what can a hacker accomplish with a fire alarm or thermostat that has internet connectivity? 

Is it just that it makes it super easy to access your home network? If my work laptop is in "sleep" mode, are they really going to be able to get past the 3 passwords to get into windows, then the 2 more for VPN and access to my company's network? I don't have a personal PC anymore.

100% genuine, snark-free question. I ask because I too would like to make our house a "smart house" with thermostat, smoke detectors, cameras, etc. 

I think that depends on how they manage to get access to the thermostat or smoke detector. If they're directly connected to the Internet without a firewall or anything else in between so they'd show up in a vulnerability scan, then a hacker can use them as a jumping off point into your network. That would be really bad (and there are a bunch of cameras out there that suffer from this).

For users who have basic security devices in place that prevent access from the outside, the hackers would have to manipulate the data that comes back from the servers that these devices communicate with, in order to potentially download some nastyware on the device that, say, takes part in a DDOS bot network. Doing something like this is considerably harder, because you'll either have to gain access to servers that belong to the manufacturer or intercept the traffic.

For the usual hacker kiddies I'm not worried about the second scenario as there are easier ways for them to hijack systems when you don't connect devices directly to the Internet. You make things a bit harder for them, so they go away. Which is why I have a separate firewall device in between the ISP-supplier router and my networks, and also don't necessarily put the computers on the same network as the TiVo and the smart home devices.

If you're dealing with a sophisticated attacker the sky is the limit and it's matter of how much inconvenience you're willing to endure in exchange for more security.

With smart thermostats, the main piece of information they can disclose is if you're home or not and what the patterns are. There isn't that much else, especially if the devices aren't on the same network as the valuable stuff (like maybe your home NAS, work machines, the box you do online banking on etc).

Cameras have a lot more scope for mischief, which is why I personally draw the line at having Internet-connected security cameras.

I haven't had a false alarm since changing to the nest system. The reason I chose for them is that they are linked; activation of one alarm will set all of them off. They self test at a reduced volume once a month, then send me a notification on my phone.

The one time I smoked the kitchen up pretty badly, I got a notice on the app that smoke has been detected and the alarm was about to go off in a few seconds. That gave me time to kick the whole house fan on.

I have no other "Internet of things" devices such as a smart speaker or smart kitchen appliances, etc. and don't really want any.

The one exception is that I have thought about getting some wireless security cameras since I have a separate garage and I want cameras on both it and the house. 

Nest is a four letter in my world. The management have a reputation for being, abusive, selfish, shiny happy people.  I have heard enough stories that I do not trust anything developed by that team.  

I've had a Nest thermostat in the last 3 houses I've lived in (note: it's been the same one, I've just taken it with me...), and we have two Nest Protect detectors in the house, one in the upstairs hallway and the other just outside our bedroom on the lower floor. I've only once had any kind of 'false alarm' on the Protect that we never totally figured out- it just kept saying there was smoke (not CO) when there clearly wasn't any, but eventually decided that it was wrong and stopped saying so.

The fact that it gives you a heads-up before going off is nice, as is the fact that you can silence it with your phone before it goes off at full volume if it's about to go off from something that you're well aware of, like burning something on the stove. I've also found that the Protect is less touchy when it comes to smoke from the kitchen- the 'dumb' detector that used to be where the Protect is in the upstairs hallway (a floor up from the kitchen) used to go off ALL the time when we would cool- the Protect hasn't so much as given warning that it was about to go off since I installed it. Don't know whether it's just that it's less sensitive/more discriminating or that we've gotten better about not burning things and using the fan in the kitchen...

In reply to Woody :

EDIT: I believe in my points but my tone sucks. It was not my intent to grouse at someone who actually saves people from fires about the inconveniences of my appliances. That would be... A really shiny happy person maneuver.

The cooking-triggered episodes I can blame on cooking (so, why *don't* the Nests false-alarm, whatever other concerns they raise?)

But the ones going off on the middle of the night on a different floor from the kitchen and bath on a day removed from any cooking episodes, which have been vacuumed per instructions and are three years into a ten year life... And which don't respond to the Hush function...

I'm a huge believer in smoke detectors and not tempted to eschew them, but there is a lot about these that sucks. I'm willing to believe that there's no good fix for differentiating cooking smoke from other smoke (and you need to warn someone who's decided to take a nap mid-fricacee anyhow), but I have a hard time believing that this is still the best we can do.