I was tempted to write them off as vaporware, but they’re sold thru Home Depot (the largest hardware/home improvement store in the North America) which means a) easy avalability and b) ability to return for refund if i’m unhappy or i get a defective product.
like many, i need to select a replacement for my nest protect detectors, which are reaching their mandatory retirement ages.
My Nest Protects are starting to reach their 10y limit and I have not been impressed with the available replacements. So I decided to give the Place a try. The features look good, but I’m not thrilled with the cloud dependency.
The install was a bit painful. You connect it to your WiFi network by using a bluetooth connection to initially talk to the device. To change the WiFi network, you have to go back to the bluetooth configuration to make the change. The problem is that it doesn’t like it if you are already paired, and will hang. You have to have the phone forget the bluetooth connection and try again. Sometimes it to several minutes for it to initially connect to start the bluetooth pairing.
The reason I encountered this problem is that once I got connected to the WiFi network, it would stay connected for about a minute, and then go offline. Multiple attempts to get it to connect failed.
I decided to remove the device and I turned off power at the breaker. At that point, it switched to battery power and connected to the WiFi. It remained connected when I turned the breaker back on.
So I don’t know if this is was just a “turn it off and turn it back on” scenario, or whether device is flaky. I’m going to monitor it over the next couple of days to see if it stable.
I would like to see a local Home Assistant integration for it. A Matter connection would be ideal, or a WiFi local polling solution. I’ve been burned by the cloud dependency too many times. It looks like the company started a GitHub repository for an integration, but it hasn’t been updated in a couple of months. The device has a motion sensor and a temperature sensor which would be nice to access.
So I will experiment with this device but I’m not sure that I will buy any more unless we can get a local integration.
I recently purchased 8 of these (6 “any” and 2 “kitchen” units for nat gas detection).
Experience so far has been generally positive.
Install/First impressions:
Units arrived quickly; packaging had all needed accessories; and were easy to install.
The mounting plate has a bit of “play” on it to align unit straight on the ceiling, since its square; the design initially looks odd, but i sort of like the “commercial” look.
Two “kitchen” sensors are certainly priced at higher end of the sanity chart but I got them to install in areas where natural gas is present.
Hardware install was straightforward (these replaced Kidde sensors, so i had to change wire harnesses). The app had several bugs in the add device wizard, where the names for devices got messed up when using add-multiple-devices mode (i.e. not finishing wizard each time). I submitted a bug report and got a response from real human on it.
App has very few options right now, but that’s not bad. A full and clear events log is a huge plus.
So far i had one VOC alert (see below) and the app pushed notification to two devices quickly, as well as kept the alert in app log for later review.
Keeping them for now and seeing what happens.
The good so far:
The units seem to have multiple levels of alarm, where the app basically tells you that it might go off imminently; this is great because you have the time to open the window if the alert is false. In my case, I got one “warning” alert from one of the “kitchen” sensors located next to bedroom (near a nat gas furnace) … after a particularly flatulent morning It was not an audible alarm, just app notice on high VOCs. Opening the window cleared the alarm in a few minutes. My other VOC sensor also indicated similar levels, so the Place sensor appears to function.
The units appear to silently self-test weekly (based on app logs) and you can do manual test via app as well.
The units are solidly built and from the FCC filings appear to be very close to Gentex commercial units inside. They also seem to be based on ESP32 SoC, so hopefully we’ll see much more functionality in the future.
The green/red “on” light is very faint, so the unit is nearly invisible at night if you don’t use the nightlight feature.
These are interconnected via a signal wire, so they should still all go off in case of power outage/no wifi.
According to manual, the units should announce which one is alarming, versus which one is doing a complementary alert. I plan to get this tested and will updated the post.
The Bad so far:
The “nightlight” feature is pretty useless. Basically its just the “test/hush” button that glows white (or another color of your choice). I guess in a completely dark hallway it would provide minimal illumination, but I wouldn’t consider it enough near, for example, basement stairs landing.
I am yet to test whether the test/hush button is capacitive or an actual button. It appears to be capacitive, so need to test whether it can be pressed with, for example, a broom. It is also VERY small, so hushing the alarm with anything but the app is probably hard/impossible for sensors that are 10+ ft in the air.
The warranty on these is just 1 year, which I find oddly short, given that other manufacturers carry 10 year plus warranty.
These units still need their batteries replaced (they are wired, to be clear) - no 10 year option.
There are no integrations available so far, but Gentex responded to my question on HD website saying that they’re looking into opening APIs to 3rd parties in the future. Gentex appears to be somewhat active on github as well. Having ability to pull data into HASS and ability to have a “hush” button setup somewhere at human-reachable level would be paramount for me.
Would love to get a non-hardwire unit option to protect additional areas, e.g. furnace room.
Last but not least, each smoke sensor downloaded 300mb and uploaded 500mb of data (via SSL/TLS in the 29 days they’ve been on my network. I still need to sniff traffic to see what they’re talking to, but seems a bit excessive
I’m really curious to see where gentex takes these - being able to hush them via HASS/button is a key missing feature for me so far.
but I got them to install in areas where natural gas is present.