Living in Lithuania, we have a love-hate relationship with winter. We love the snow, but we hate what the heating season does to our homes: it turns the air into a desert. To combat the dry air, like many of you, I rely on humidifiers running around the clock.
But this January, my solution to dry air became the source of a nightmare.
At the start of January, my family and I left for a short trip abroad. We were hundreds of kilometers away when I received the notification that every homeowner dreads: Smoke detected.
I frantically checked my cameras. No fire. I checked the temperature sensors in every room. Normal. I called my neighbors to go listen. They confirmed it—the alarm was screaming and no fire was visible.
But here was the problem: I was using a “dumb” smoke detector. It had a battery, a siren, and absolutely no brain. I couldn’t silence it remotely. It was a false alarm, likely triggered by a drift of steam or dust, but I had no way to tell it to shut up. It screamed for over 48 hours. When we finally returned, the device was still chirping, and my cat was traumatized.
I realized then that I needed a change. I needed a device that I could silence remotely if I confirmed it was a false alarm, and more importantly, one that could tell the difference between a house fire and a humidifier.
I dove into the Home Assistant community and found a thread discussing the Heiman HS1SA-E Heiman smoke alarm HS1SA-E new features in ZHA and Z2M. It seemed promising. I reached out to Heiman, and we agreed they would send me two units for testing.
But I wanted a real showdown. I wanted to see how the new contender stacked up against a popular favorite. So, I bought an Aqara SD-S01D to test alongside the Heiman HS1SA (standard model) and the Heiman HS1SA-E (enhanced model).
I set up a test environment using Home Assistant and Zigbee2MQTT to see what these devices exposed and, crucially, how they handled the “Humidifier Beast.”
Contender 1: Aqara SD-S01D
I placed the Aqara unit near my running humidifier.
- Result: FAIL.
- Time to Failure: Less than 10 minutes. It didn’t take long for the Aqara to catch the steam and start screaming. In a dry climate where humidifiers are essential, this is a dealbreaker. It simply couldn’t distinguish between water vapor and smoke particles.
Contender 2: Heiman HS1SA (Standard)
Next up was the standard Heiman model. I placed it in the same steam-filled path.
- Result: PASS. I left it there for hours. Silence. It ignored the steam completely. To be sure it wasn’t just broken, I introduced actual smoke. Beep-beep-beep! It triggered immediately. It seems Heiman has tuned their optical sensors to be much less sensitive to water vapor—a massive win for my use case.
Contender 3: Heiman HS1SA-E (Enhanced)
Finally, the new “E” model. Physically, it behaved exactly like its sibling.
- Result: PASS. It ignored the steam and reacted only to the smoke. However, the real magic happened when I looked at my Zigbee2MQTT dashboard.
This is what new Heiman HS1SA-E provides to Home Assistant by using Zigbee2MQTT.
While the standard HS1SA is a solid detector, the HS1SA-E provides significantly more information. It’s a Zigbee 3.0 device that offers better stability and more exposed entities in Home Assistant. For a power user, seeing things like specific fault statuses or sensitivity parameters (depending on the quirk) gives you peace of mind that the device is actually alive and thinking, not just waiting to die.
The Verdict
If you live in a region where winter means dry air and humidifiers are a way of life, the choice is clear.
- Avoid the Aqara SD-S01D if you plan to mount it anywhere near a humidity source. It is too trigger-happy with steam.
- Buy the Heiman HS1SA-E. It passed the “Humidifier Test” with flying colors, integrates deeply with Home Assistant, and offers the rich data that smart home enthusiasts crave.
My cat is sleeping peacefully again, and I can finally travel without fearing the false alarm nightmare.
P.S. I haven’t been paid by neither of these vendors and didn’t align on the text either. It’s my personal opinion. Happy to provide more information and to answer to your questions.