California fires: smart speakers and emergency alerts

Fri Oct 13 22:40:49 UTC 2017

I’m quite surprised they didn’t send out a local emergency alert. I’ve gotten these for Tornadoes and amber alerts. Wildfires would be comparable to a Tornado IMO. 

Jared Mauch

> On Oct 13, 2017, at 6:33 PM, Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> 
> I messaged the Nest guys a few weeks ago about that very issue.  I
> think it would be somewhat simple for them to put an RF module in
> their Protect devices (smoke alarms) and a speaker to alert about the
> issue.  Since they are wifi-enabled, they could probably also arrange
> a clearer audio feed over the internet with a fallback to RF if the
> internet is down/power is out.
> 
> -A
> 
>> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 1:59 PM, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Has anyone heard if the smart speaker companies (Amazon Echo, Google Home)
>> plan to include emergency alert capability?  An estimate 10% of households
>> own a smart speaker, and Gartner (well-known for its forecasting accuracy)
>> predicts 75% of US households will have a smart speaker by 2020.
>> 
>> Although most silicon valley tech nerds are still in the "invincible" years,
>> were the california fires close enough to silicon valley that smart speaker
>> developers might think an emergency could affect them.  And an emergency
>> alert capability in their smart speakers might be important?
>> 