That's it, Richard. That kind of stuff drives me nuts.
Adding the proper technology to everyday devices can be helpful. Adding the wrong technology just makes the devices expensive, failure-prone, and suitable only for extreme gadget freaks.
Several years ago, we had some smoke detectors that frequently threw false alarms. And it was always in the middle of the night. There are seven alarms in the house and they are wired together - when one goes off, they all go off. You have to find the one that threw the alarm and press its button to turn the things off. Of course, there is no indicator to know which one it was so you have to just keep pushing buttons until you get the right one. Most of the time, it was one of the three alarms that are on eleven-foot ceilings. I quickly got tired of dragging the step ladder in from the garage at three o'clock in the morning. So I found some smoke alarms that had an added feature - you could turn them off with a remote control. Any IR remote control in the house would work. I used one from the living room TV, as it was the most convenient. There was no additional installation required; they just popped in where the old alarm was. No blue tooth, No wi-fi. No software updates. That is the proper use of technology to improve mundane devices.
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