I probably wouldn’t have purchased it if I hadn’t been replacing a Nest, and had the time, patience, and capability at the time to actually figure out a better option. However, with a year of use on mine, other than one false, I’m happy enough with them, that since there IS nothing else that works at the same quality level as the Nest, that when I go to install more, I’d probably consider adding more of them, because they seem to work well.
If there’s something that’s better, and offers at least the same feature set, or more, I’d love to hear. I do need to get a proper fire alert system in this house, back in 1976 apparently they thought a single unit in the main level hallway was sufficient for a 3br house with a living room, kitchen, dining room, and a full basement. That is extremely wrong now.
Wireless interconnect will be quite handy for that purpose.
Does the SC5 work with the ha-nest-protect integration? In theory, First Alert claims it will work with the Nest app, so I’m wondering if it that integration will show the SC5. I’m really struggling here, because the Resideo app is crap.
I have just under 2 months before my first Nest Protect expires, and probably 60 days after that before it self destructs, so a little under 4 months to make a decision.
Anybody look a the Kidde 30CUA10? Any other good options?
I think it only works with the Nest app if you converted to the Google one, if you were still using the legacy one, it does not. Something like that. I could be wrong, though, it didn’t work for mine, and I was under the impression that if I had, then it would work. Since I didn’t switch, I just got the Resideo app … It does alerts, and that’s all I needed. The HACS available integration someone posted above also SEEMS to work for it, though I haven’t gone and physically tested it like someone else did.
trust me, you’ll want a replacement before that, i don’t believe it will actually hard lock itself, but what it will do is it will become so obnoxious that you WILL have to replace it immediately. I think I referred to that earlier as a hard lock, but it seemed to still be functional, but it was telling me it needed to be replaced CONSTANTLY once I let it go beyond I think it was 2 months past the expire. At expiration, it was notifying me like once a week, but once it got to 2 months, it started screeching every 10 minutes or so.
I was putting it off because my employment was in question at the time, so I didn’t even want to put out a $100 expense, and I also wanted to make sure that if I was going to, I found the right thing… but that forced my hand so I just went with the SC5, because I wasn’t going to go without a detector.
As I said earlier, I don’t hate the SC5 as a detector, if I’d had this instead of a Nest a decade ago, I’m sure I’d be fine with it. But in comparison to the Nest, the Nest was better. I don’t know that there’s anything better than this out there, though? I see a lot of people in this thread saying “don’t buy this one”, but I haven’t seen too many people saying what else to buy instead.
That’s kind of what I’m running into as well. I’m considering the Kidde Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector (30CUAR-W), which is less expensive than SC5 (by quite a bit actually), and it appears that there is active integration development through HACS. I need to replace 8 Nest Protect units in my home so $70 a piece (or less in multipacks) vs $130 each is quite a big difference in cost. If the SC5 had the same level of features as the Nest, then I wouldn’t question it, but for the same price as the Nest was and not the same level of features, and lack of HAAS integration, I’m not sure I can justify the additional cost.
I’ve looked at a few others (Place), but I’ve read mixed reviews (same sort of mixed reviews for both SC5 and the Kidde), and currently no smart home integration, so this is a tough decision. I’ve seen that Place may be working on Matter integration, but nothing yet.
I have two installed recently and not having any issues... They seem to have no lights active now by default as after I installed these they have no lights active.
well, i'd love to hear information about what you end up on and why -- if it's a better alternative than my SC5, I'd be happy to jump. My house presently only has 1 detector from it's 1970's design, which seems ludicrous, so I need to change that, and if I'm going to change that, then I wouldn't mind finding something cheaper/better before i do so
I do know that the HACS integration that "works" with the SC5 does at least report network connection, as I have an automation tied to that that seems to fire correctly. It does not correctly report network disconnection, though, as I've never had that event fire.
Keep your eyes out on this one for UL certification. You can use it now but currently lacks US certified model so use at your own risk. Should be on your radar as an option though as it ties in natively to HA via Matter which drives interconnection capabilities and automations.
Do the devices have proper U.S. certifications or are they UL listed?
The current MSC-1 smoke alarm is certified under EN 14604 and EN 50291 standards for the European market. We are also actively developing a new model that meets UL 217 and UL 2034 standards for the U.S. market and will share updates once the certification process progresses.
@silenthooligan - The major drawbacks of this model are that it doesn’t have voice alerts to tell you which alarm went off, and it isn’t hardwired, regardless of how long the battery lasts.
I’ve often read that, in a modern U.S. home fire, you may have only about 1 to 2 minutes to escape after the smoke alarm sounds. So knowing exactly where the fire was detected can save vital time.
I once had an alarm go off at night while I was asleep, and the Nest announced that it was in the kids’ bedroom. I got upstairs with my heart pounding in less than 30 seconds, only to find that we’d forgotten the humidifier on and it had created a dense fog. We no longer use it, as apparently they’re more harmful than good anyway.
But in that moment, having the exact location was extremely valuable. I knew exactly where to go instead of wasting precious seconds trying to figure out which of the 6 alarms had triggered. And in our house, there’s only one escape route if you’re upstairs.
Actually, now that the kids are old enough to use one, I think I’m finally going to buy a window escape ladder.
I really hope Sensereo releases a more feature-rich version that addresses these gaps, because I’ll soon have to replace all of my alarms and I’d much rather not give up features I’ve come to consider important. Thank you for pointing it out, as it is now on my “to monitor” list
So I guess I have two questions. As CO and smoke detectors are required on every floor in Ontario, Canada now and my old detectors expire next year, is there a good option that will pass fire code besides the sc5? does anything work with HA at the moment? Or are we all just stuck waiting to see what happens? I have only purchased one of three required devices at the moment and I don’t want to spend more unless it both works with HA and complies with fire code
