Oct. 3, 2018 EAS Presidential Alert test

Tue Oct 9 16:19:59 UTC 2018

On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 9:19 PM Sean Donelan <sean at 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