Nest Labs, maker of smart home appliances like the Nest thermostat and Nest Protect smoke and CO alarm has announced a recall of the Protect, citing safety concerns with one of the alarm's futuristic features.

CEO of Nest Labs Tony Fadell announced on Nest's blog that the company would cease selling the "Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide" and offer refunds to individuals who opted to send the product back because of a potential glitch that could affect customer safety.

Potential Problems in Nest's Simple UI

Nest Labs provides next-generation, internet connected home appliances with user-friendly features that have garnered high praise for innovation and simplicity. But one of those features is the source of the safety concern. Nest Wave is a part of the Nest Protect's simple user interface, which uses motion detection to allow those of us who are too short to reach the smoke alarm (and who isn't) to simply "wave" off a false alarm -- like after burning the popcorn, again.

But as Fadell explains, the company has discovered that Nest Wave could be a source of danger:

"At Nest, we conduct regular, rigorous tests to ensure that our products are the highest quality. During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated. This could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire."

While Fadell says he's not aware of any customers who have encountered the confluence of circumstances that could cause the Nest Protect to treat a real emergency as a false alarm, he stated, "the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me."

Disable or Discard

Fadell says he wants to completely disable the Nest Wave feature until a safe solution has been worked out, and has ceased the sale of Nest Protect and offered a full refund for those who want to get rid of the gadget.

But for almost all Nest customers, this should not be a concern. The entire point of having a Nest Protect or thermostat is the next-generation interconnectivity -- to be able to control basic features of your home through the internet, from anywhere.

As such, anyone who has bought a Nest Protect for its intended purpose likely has it hooked up to their WiFi, and thus to the internet. In that case, the smoke alarm has already updated its software and disabled the Nest Wave feature. You might want to double check that it's connected and signed into your Nest account, and Nest provides an instructional Q&A here.

Those who bought a Nest Protect and have never connected it to WiFi, and never will (why did you spend extra on an internet-connected smoke alarm?) can contact Nest here for a full refund.