I have 2 features that I'd love to see in a smoke detector:
1) notify me when the battery level is low so I don't have to think about it 2) allow me to snooze the smoke detector for 15 / 30 minutes if I end up smoking up the kitchen
I want a better relationship with my smoke detector because I can't trust it to tell me when something really has gone wrong.
Existing smoke detectors are pretty ugly with bad UI.
Existing smoke detectors are also exceedingly simple, which is a great thing for lifesaving safety devices. Complexity is the enemy of reliability, and reliability is the primary requirement of safety devices.
One winter evening, we were dispatched to a chimney fire. After we extinguished it (with the homeowner's hose and a chimney nozzle) I did a walk through of the house and attic to check for extension.
I found his smoke detectors hanging open, with the batteries removed. When I asked the homeowner if he wanted some new batteries for them (we kept free batteries on the engine), he happily took them. When I asked him how long his smoke detectors had been without batteries, he quickly answered: "Since Christmas morning."
I have no doubt as to where the new batteries went...
What bad UI? They usually have either 1 or 2 buttons. They always have a test button and sometimes have a secondary button to disable the alarm (e.g. if you accidentally trigger it). They're all basically identical and people have been used to them that way for a long time. I'm not saying there isn't a better way to do it (I'm no UI expert) but does this current UI really need improved?
All things considered, this is a pretty genius move. In the push to create 'smart homes' most of the attention has been on lighting, kitchen appliances, and entertainment systems. But one thing that has always bugged me was how do you get a refrigerator at the back of the house to communicate seamlessly with the wireless router in the front if the signal doesn't reach that far. I was thinking that mesh networking would play a big part, but even in an appliance saturated home, there could still be some dead spots. Well, smart smoke detectors might solve that, as they are in almost every room in the house! One issue I can forsee is that not all homes have hard-wired smoke detectors (which means power would be an issue, thus limiting what they can do with it).
EDIT: Seems like everyone is focusing on the UI comment. While I think that that is still an issue, I think the more exciting possibility is that a 'smart detector' could also provide nodes for a mesh network (or something similar), essentially providing a communication layer for appliances/devices in the home. If they go this route and they succeed, they could put themselves in a really good position competitively, as they would 'own' the networking layer.