Networked/Wired Nest Protects will not reset after CO alarm

[lalo9797]

The Nest Protect in my first floor entryway (one of seven total in my house) triggered a warning this morning that there was CO detected. I immediately opened up all of the doors and windows close to the space to vent any carbon monoxide. I wasn't convinced that there was actually CO as another Nest Protect through a doorway (just three feet away) was not triggered. But of course I did not want to take any chances with an invisible, odorless, deadly gas.

I silenced the alarm from sounding. After about 10 minutes the app told me that the CO levels were safe again. And the app showed me green rings for all of the Nest Protects in my house. However, though the Nest Protect that triggered the alarm returned to normal, all of the six other units continued to flash amber rings for the rest of the day. I restarted my iPhone to reset the app. And I tried to physically reset the Nest units but they would not reset. If I held down the button it would begin to give me the version number but then would say there is CO detected in the entryway. Even removing a Nest protect from the app, pulling it off the ceiling, and taking the batteries out does not seem to reset it. As soon as I put the batteries back in it starts to flash the amber ring and tells me there is CO in the entryway (while the entryway Nest shows a green ring). 

Needless to say, 90 minutes on the phone with tech support (listening to some of the most annoying hold music ever) yielded absolutely not results except being a colossal waste of time and them telling me that all of my Nest Protects, which were installed in 2016, must have failed. Simultaneously. One the same day. Which, yes, is as ridiculous a suggestion as it sounds.

I should say that I'm in Seattle where we are having some very rare, extreme cold which has been freezing the condensation pipe on my heating system and has triggered at least one event in which the gas fired heater shut itself down as the flue was partially blocked with ice. So the presence of CO in my house is not outside of the realm of possibilities. But here I am, at a time when I need this system to function, facing the reality that my investment of $1,500 for this system (not to mention the added ecosystem of Nest Secure and a bunch of Nest cameras) now seems useless and I'm going to go to the hardware store and buy a non-Nest CO detector for $20. 

In the meantime, whilst I'm shopping for alternatives, can anyone recommend a solution to reset these things? Will leaving the batteries out for several hours purge the memory and allow me to do a factory reset?

[Mcnutter1]

Having the exact same issue. 12 out of 13 nest protects are stuck in this same flashing yellow issue where they won’t reset. 

Tried holding the button, nothing. Tried pulling the battery, nothing. 

Any Luck?

[lalo9797]

Yes! I took the battery out of one of them and left it for a good 3-4 hours. When I put them back in it had reset itself. Back to a blue ring). I reinstalled it on the ceiling and miraculously all of the others on the network returned to normal without me having to touch them. 

[Mcnutter1]

Just went around and did the same. Will let them sit and see how it goes. Thanks for the advice. 

[jhurstus]

I had the same thing happen.  My hypothesis for what caused this: the device that originally triggered the alarm was able to broadcast the CO alert, but then was unable to successfully transmit the clear signal (maybe just at the edge of wireless broadcast range?), leaving other previously alerted devices in a stuck CO alert state.

How I resolved it:

• take the protect that originally triggered the CO alert, unplug it, and physically move it near another nest protect that is in good wifi range (not sure if the wifi part is important or not)
• do a sensor test on the protect that you just unplugged and moved; let that fully complete

That seemed to get all my protects back into a non-alert state, specifically after the post-test 'chirp chirp' sync completed across all devices.  Hope that helps.

[lalo9797]

Thanks. But there is no way that was possible in my household. You'll note that I mentioned above that the Nest that triggered was in a hallway. Just through the doorway was another Nest unit (not 3 feet away). And there is actually another through a separate doorway about 3.5 feet away. The alarm that triggered was less than 10 feet from one of two wi-fi routers, in a household with solid Wi-Fi (and incidentally, a 1 Gig symmetrical connection). Fortunately, the entire system reset by physically removing the batteries from the failing unit for a few hours. 

[Wombat85]

I had a Protect fail in the master bedroom on Sunday while we were out (1 of 8, 2 years old). This is the second time it's alerted for smoke and then went straight to "emergency". (The first time it did it was at 9PM and my two small children were scared to death). 

I called Google, listened to the same awful music and demanded it be replaced. I was told to change the batteries and if it fails a 3rd time, they'll replace it. It sat with no battery for 48hrs, but now all the other protects are flashing yellow before the nightly promise. I click it for the message and it says "The Power is out in the master bedroom". I got the new batteries and hooked the master bedroom protect back up, but all the other protects are still saying the same message. I waited 4 hours to see if it cleared, but to no avail. Yellow flash and then nightly promise. I deleted the MB Protect from my account and they are STILL saying the same error message. Do I need to delete all of them and then add them back? If I'm deleting all of them and adding them back on individually, they're going on craigslist.

[Arghmeegan]

I’m going through the same thing as you all.  I’m trying the solves you posted and will update this thread with my results.  Customer service was less than helpful and just told me to replace the units since I couldn’t get them to stop flashing yellow after a CO2 event. 

[Arghmeegan]

After several attempts and leaving the batteries out for a few days, I was able to get mine reconnected yesterday.  The customer service person had me create a new “Home” separate from my thermostats and the protects connected without issue.  I did reset each one just prior to reinstalling just to be sure

[odoylerules]

I have the issue where I disconnect the nest protect, then do the factory reset. When it comes back online it says, "Test in the Basement". It was previously programmed to be in the basement so it didnt factory reset...I've had so much trouble with these devices and support is useless...

[FCelik]

SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM: Hi everybody, I am an engineer in the technology industry; I experienced the same issue last Sunday.  I have 15 Nest Protect Systems in my house.  The one in my garage triggered the CO alert.  I silenced the alarm, open the garage doors & windows and aired the garage fully.  However, 12 of the Nest Protect systems started displaying Yellow lights.  I tried everything physically on the devices and on my iPhone Nest application to reset the alarms; I could not resolve the issue for two days.   I called the Nest support team and went through all the details.  They were very helpful but we could not solve the issue.  Finally, they escalated the issue to their engineering team.  Their conclusion was that there is still CO in the environment.  After the support call, I changed my mindset.  Instead of blaming the equipment, I reviewed the location of the smoke detector that triggered the alarm.  CO is lighter than air so it moves upward and it collects on the ceiling of the room.  Although I aired the garage, I left a section (above the garage doors and windows) with contaminated air, especially near the ceiling where the Nest smoke detector.  I have a Shop-vac with extensions so that I could reach the top of the ceiling.  I let the vacuum run for an hour and pulled the trapped air from the top 2" of the ceiling.  Within the next few hours, the devices went back to normal.  Bottom line: If the Nest Protect devices are stuck with Yellow light alerts, you still have CO within the environment.  You need to clear the air completely.  The devices are doing their job to protect you.

[lalo9797]

This leaves me with so many questions. But first let me say that I think I've read somewhere that Nest actually recommends against installing in garages for this very reason. That said, I've had multiple CO alarms over the past couple of years that (based on testing with a separate device) suggests they were false. The thing is though, with a deadly, odorless, colorless gas one always has to assume they are real alarms. But beyond all off that, I'm left wondering how big (or high ceilinged) your garage could possibly be that you "aired" the space and yet somehow managed to leave a section of air unchanged (a very neat trick). And if CO was actually hanging at the ceiling, why would you want to start running a device that redistributes the CO at floor level where it is more accessible. And why would you think it would need a full hour for that to happen?  Most shop vacs have such significant CFM flow rate that five minutes would likely be overkill.

[FCelik]

Yes, I read that Nest is not recommended for garage but My garage has a different set up and I installed it. Nest is easier to control remotely. I have four-car garage which is 60 feet by 25 feet. My ceilings are 28-32 feet high. I kept my shop-vac on the floor outside the garage and extended the intake nozzle with attachments all the way to the ceiling. This way, the intake nozzle of the shop-vac would extend to the ceiling and suck the air above the garage door & window level and blow the air outside the garage. Due to the high ceiling and amount of air trapped, I run it long time. 

[osama3tv]

جيد

[Bugsy151Nest]

Despite my dislike for Google / Nest support, I’m the sciency, techy, engineer type and I wanted FCelic’s “lighter than air CO accumulation” explanation to be right. I have the EXACT same issue. Garage, real CO event, persistent CO warning despite opening garage doors, can’t reset protects etc. 

I went back to the garage today (after fighting to reset my interior protects) to further air out the space (high ceiling there!) and prove this theory right. However, it seems that the garage protect is the ONLY unit that has reset fully!  It has no issues!  The other three are stuck still despite the originating device having cleared its sensor and the original event.

Time to pull batteries in the other units and see what happens. Getting annoying because when they are pulsing yellow, they are killing batteries in about two days and we’re all know how expensive these batteries are. 

[Bugsy151Nest]

And, to add to the story, two of my four protects are battery units and both started chirping the low battery alarm in the middle of the night while still pulsing the erroneous yellow ring, which I’m fairly certain they shouldn’t do. Replaced them and went on with life for a few days, still pulsing yellow rings. Then they started chirping AGAIN, and I checked the batteries. NOT dead!  1.7v!  Either the protects lose their minds after a CO event or the chirping is a feature (not a bug!) to bring your attention back to the event that the unit thinks is still ongoing. More to come after the four hour wait without batteries. 

[Bugsy151Nest]

Finally got to the bottom of it. Even though my garage unit which caused the CO alarm had reset, it hadn’t sent the ‘all clear’ to the rest of them and still had some aspect of the alarm in its status. More critically, this was the first device I added to the nest network and is/was the master unit.  Every time I tried to reset a protect, it interrupted the reset routine with the alert when they connected to the garage/master protect.  You can’t reset your protects until the master is reset. Once I did that, they all reset and all is well now. 

[tonyalexander]

I had the exact same issue as all of you. I have 8 Protects and some are in very high places and unable to access without special equipment. CO alert went off in a utility space, quickly cleared, and all Protects except the one that alerted were stuck in "Silenced"/Yellow Ring mode. Tried to press reset them but the would go into reset, start saying the version number, and instantly cutover to "Silenced" mode again. Pulled batteries and waited 12+ hours, etc. and always the same result. What worked for me to fix was to pull the initial CO alerting Protect and doing a hard reset (the only one where this was possible). Then I re-added that Protect to my home (took a few tries but eventually worked). Luckily this unit was one I could get to easily. Once it was back in the Home all the other Protects cleared themselves and are in normal operation. Hope this helps someone else!

[Bugsy151Nest]

Based on what I’ve experienced, your protect that had the alarm was also your nest network master / first nest device on your network. Resetting the master seems to be the only way to clear the alarm completely. What a pain in the behind. Glad you got yours resolved.