Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Smoke detectors
Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2013–2025), in 10 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Chirp too faint and high-pitched to tell which detector needs a batteryUnreviewed
20132026- Low-battery chirp is annoying and easy to forget, so people rarely check batteries2025-04-13
- Low-battery chirp can't be silenced easily and needs a battery the user may not have2024-09-30
- Single chirp every five minutes is too faint to locate which detector2023-09-01
Single infrequent beep makes the alarm source hard to locateUnreviewed
20132026- Single beep at long intervals makes it hard to locate or identify the source2023-09-02
- Two strident beeps are hard to locate by sound, so the detector can't be found2017-02-20
- Can't tell which alarm is beeping or what the beep patterns mean2013-09-24
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 16 complaints
- Low-battery chirp is annoying and easy to forget, so people rarely check batteries2025-04-13
- Low-battery chirp can't be silenced easily and needs a battery the user may not have2024-09-30
- Single beep at long intervals makes it hard to locate or identify the source2023-09-02
- Single chirp every five minutes is too faint to locate which detector2023-09-01
- Cheap detectors are so hard to silence after false alarms that people disconnect them2022-01-31
- Low battery warning is a red LED flash the user can't distinguish as colour blind2017-12-18
- Chirp is too faint and high-pitched to tell which of several detectors needs a battery2017-12-18
- Two strident beeps are hard to locate by sound, so the detector can't be found2017-02-20
- Battery compartment is hidden, requiring unscrewing or backside searching to find2013-10-08
- Controls on the ceiling are hard to reach, and no quick way to cancel a false alarm2013-10-08
- Alarms go off from toast and showers, and silencing them only lasts minutes2013-10-08
- Existing smoke alarms are inscrutable, so people struggle to deal with them when they go off2013-10-08
- Low-battery chirp gives no visible indication of which detector is failing2013-10-08
- Interconnected alarms all sound, so the user can't tell which unit triggered2013-09-25
- Can't tell which alarm is beeping or what the beep patterns mean2013-09-24
- Existing smoke detectors have a bad, ugly user interface2013-09-24