I am looking to replace the First Alert Zcombo devices I have (3). They just don’t seem to work that well for me. I have tried to default them and re add them with no luck at all. They are manufactured in Jan of 2018. When they did work I was skeptical of the info I got as far as battery life. So what is a good device at a reasonable cost, I am in the US
Thanks
They’re due to be replaced on 2028 no matter what anyway… (sensors are 10 year lifespan)
When my Nest Protects die (3 yrs) I plan on going back to standard (Northamerica) hardwired co/smokes (i have a hardwired smoke loop in the home) and adding a ZWave relay like a Zooz zen55 to capture the alarm.
What I would like is a smoke detector that I can silence from Home Assistant. It gets annoying when the smoke detector is the dinner bell. Joking aside, she is a wonderful cook, but when she is frying meats, especially fish, the smoke detector reliably goes off.
That’s a recurrent ask but difficult under NFPA rules. One should physically verify and last time I checked 23.8.2.11.3 limits remote silence to portions taken offline. (a feature rarely in residential)
So technically now possible after the 22 code revision but would take a ton of money to implement in code compliance therefore I doubt it goes in the cheap stuff.
Man I wish Halo was still around.
Just as an FYI, here is a write-up I did a couple of months ago for new detectors I installed:
I’ve been very happy with my First Alert’s, they have worked quite well and the battery life has been excellent. Like any battery detector, they have woken me up a few times when the battery gets low in the middle of the night, but other than that they do work. What’s not working on yours?
Hi CO_4X4
I have two older models 2018 and a newer one 2022 (Zwave Plus) They are a PIA to connect to the network, at least the 2018, I am going to try the 2022 model tonight. I am not keen on the reporting of the battery life, but I am finding that that is normal for all the Smokes out there. If I get the Zwave Plus model to connect I will probably get replacements to be consistent The information on connecting to a network is sparse at best from what I can find. I asked ChatGPT and it gave me info totally different, that also didn’t work with the 2018 models.
Poor battery reporting isn’t exclusive to First Alert, in my experience 50% or more of all Z-Wave and Zigbee devices don’t report battery properly and/or frequently. However, this is often overcome with Z-Wave by forcing an update from the device.
I bit the bullet and replaced all three SD with new Zcombo units. It was a breeze to get them connected. We will see how it goes from here.