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Nest Issues Consumer Safety Notice, Halts Sales of Smoke Alarm

Company notices the alarm can be turned off inadvertently.

Nest announced Thursday that it disabled a feature on and halted sales of its Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm, after noticing the alarm could be unintentionally disabled.

The so-called Nest Wave feature allows users to turn the alarm off with a wave of the hand. But in recent lab tests, the company noticed a “unique combination of circumstances” that could inadvertently activate the feature.

The company, which was recently acquired by Google for $3.2 billion, said that could delay the alarm from sounding in the event of a real fire.

In a “consumer safety notice,” Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell said:

We identified this problem ourselves and are not aware of any customers who have experienced this, but the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me and I want to address it immediately.
We feel that the best and safest thing to do is to immediately disable the Nest Wave feature to resolve the issue and remove any safety concerns. While we fix Nest Wave, we have also halted sales of all new Nest Protect alarms to ensure no one buys an alarm that needs an immediate update.

The company also posted an FAQ for customers here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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