Scotland is introducing some new laws relating to fire alarms for home owners. The tl;dr is that I’m going to need to buy some interlinked fire alarms. I recently set-up Home Assistant on a Raspberry pi and, seeing as they need to be linked somehow, I’m wondering if I can’t get them linked to my Home Assistant too.
Does anybody have any suggestions of smart hardware that might fit the bill? I’m very new to Home Assistant, having only set it up last weekend. I don’t want to buy hardware only to find that it can’t interconnect.
The basic info on the standard is:
One smoke alarm installed in the room most frequently used for general daytime living purposes
One smoke alarm in every circulation space on each storey, such as hallways and landings
One heat alarm installed in every kitchen
All alarms should be ceiling mounted and interlinked (when one goes off, they all go off, so you can hear the nearest one to you if you can’t hear he one closest to the fire)
A carbon monoxide detector is required anywhere there’s a carbon-burning appliance. It does not need to be linked to the fire alarms.
I’ve searched the forums a bit. Some suggested a Kidde module. The Kidde fire alarms seem to be 120v and I’m in the UK. I’ve also checked out the Fireangel, First Alert Z-wave, Xiaomi, and other providers but it’s a little bewildering.
I’m curious as to whether any of you have a setup which fits these criteria and is connected to HomeKit. If you do - How much did it cost?
There’s very few good smart smoke alarms. Indeed the only one I can find is Nest… Tests of some of the Z-Wave ones in the past have shown that they’re ineffective.
I’m personally considering the FireAngel Pro Connected range. I may not be able to easily monitor it with HA, but they score very highly with Which, as do Kidde and Ei Electronics. Keep in mind that Z-Wave modules are regional specific, US modules won’t work here
In theory, any smart alarm with a wired interconnect should be something that can be monitored - it may just require some DIY.
Reading that standard, it appears it was written by people who do not know fire detection systems. There are 12 and 24V low voltage DC fire detection systems that are completely left out by the requirement that any wired system be mains voltage, additional high voltage wiring will actually increase the probability of a fire occurring.
I am actually in the process of converting my house from a combination of mains and battery powered detectors to a complete interlinked 12V system, with per floor detection grids. If I lived in Scotland, that would not be an option for me, despite the advantages it affords.
Seems like I will have to abandon the idea of Nest Protect. Can’t think of anything suitable as a replacement for a smart home setup without tinkering and mods, which may be not complaint with the regulations.
Nest Protects are wireless so would not comply to the new requirements, it seems.
There are however zwave/zigbee audio listeners that would listen to the alarm out of smoke/CO detectors. I just don’t know whether the alarm in Scotland would sound the same as in US, for the listeners to work. I know this only because I saw something in another thread recently.
Also note the alarms for smoke and for CO are different, at least in US. Search YouTube and you probably could find how they are different.
The regs require radio connectivity between the modules. Nest uses Weave custom protocol to interconnect modules. It doesn’t require WiFi at all. However, you can use WiFi to link it further to Internet for notifications on your phone etc. So in terms of connectivity, wired Nest Protect is fully compliant with the regs. The only downside is that there is no Heat Rise ONLY module, which is the requirement for the kitchen. Hence we are left out with everything compliant except the kitchen module, which in turns make the whole setup pointless.
I don’t think that’s true. Quoting the regs (linked above):
16.8. Heat alarm: A fire detector that detects the presence of fire by monitoring the
changes in temperature associated with combustion. It produces an audible and/or
visible signal locally in a room or a home. Heat alarms should conform to BS 5446-2.
For more detailed information on heat alarms, see BS 5839 Part 6. In a fire, heat
alarms operate later than smoke alarms, so their use should be restricted to rooms in
which smoke alarms would cause false alarms (e.g. kitchens).
It does not say that a heat alarm cannot also be a smoke alarm. So you can use a smoke AND heat alarm in your kitchen if you want. A combined smoke and heat alarm is both a smoke alarm and a heat alarm.
I’m not selling Nests, but I think there is no reason not to use them for this purpose if they suit your needs. They are way too expensive for me, though. I need 4 alarms for my tiny 2-bedroom house! I can get all the dumb alarms I need for £145 (the price of less than two Nests) and then have fun soldering an ESP8266 to a microphone
In US, at least, it seems that Kiddle for example has this kind of devices that would trigger an external switch, when there is an alarm somewhere in your wired & interconnected (dumb) smoke detectors.
… from the reviewers, you can see ideas to link this thing to trigger a siren, a z-wave binary sensor, some whole house alarm system, etc.
I assume other smoke/fire detector providers have something similar.
The Nest Protect is specifically mentioned as not being compliant, as it does not have a heat alarm module that can be used in the Kitchen. Are you suggesting just placing a regular Nest Protect in the Kitchen instead of a heat alarm (and putting up with false alarms)? I am still not convinced this would comply with the regulations, as they specifically state an interlinked heat alarm is required in the Kitchen.
I went with the FireAngel Pro Connected as I couldn’t find a better option. This is compliant with the new Scottish regulations and can be very rudimentally integrated into Home Assistant. It’s not great, but it sort of works. See here for further discussion regarding this.
Hi Colinpickup, I have installed Heiman Smoke and CO sensors in my house. I selected the Zigbee version because I don’t have Zwave currently only Zigbee via a conbee II.
I bought the smoke sensors from Aliexpress at around $22 each. They work great with HA.
The heiman CO sensor is about $35
The device itself has a loud siren but I also have some automations triggered if smoke or CO is detected.
If we are away HA sends an announcement to my phone
If it is at night all the house lights are turned on
I am currently experimenting with Xiaomi environment sensors, these combine temp, humidity and pressure sensors into a small device. I am looking to write an automation that senses a rapid rise in temperature and tie that into my HA warning.
Do they have a heat alarm version? The new Scottish regulations require this for the Kitchen. I don’t see one available on AliExpress, just the regular smoke detectors.
@SpawnTerror You are correct, the regulations specifically state:
Please note that the Nest Protect System will not meet the standard. This is because they do not meet the requirements for a heat alarm under the relevant British Standard. British Standard (BS 5839-6:2019) states that only heat alarms should be installed in kitchens.
The full regulations can be found here, where this paragraph can be found under the “Where and what to buy” section.
I’m going to hold off and see what comes out this year, I’m hoping that some Thread / Matter enabled smoke alarms start coming out this year - so I am not going to spend now to get things. Plus I have spent days looking for ZWave or Zigbee Carbon Monoxide detectors and I just can’t find anything at a reasonable price.
Yes you are right, thanks for quoting that bit of the regulation. It seems totally bizarre that if you wanted to put a smoke alarm (i.e. a Nest Protect), which is more sensitive than a heat alarm, in your kitchen, you would be breaking the law!
Thanks for the link to the discussion about the FireAngel Pro. Looks like that might be the best option for out of the box HA integration.
I think the reason a heat alarm is specified in a Kitchen is that it doesn’t create false alarms and thus cause people to remove/disconnect it because it’s always being set off. And, of course, with an interlinked alarm system it’s not just the one in the Kitchen that goes off if you burn the toast, it’s all of them. It does actually make sense to me.
Regarding the FireAngel Pro Connected, I have had a problem with the app on the phone not allowing me to log in a couple of times and I have also had issues with the hub going offline a few times (you do get notified via email and on the phone). I have solved the hub going offline with a smart plug to reboot it i.e. when detected offline, have Home Assistant power off the plug and back on again. I’ve also found that the Alexa Skill requires regular reauthentication/relogin (I think it’s about once a month, maybe every 30 days). I have reported it to the developers via the Alexa Skill reporting option, so hopefully it will get fixed. It’s an irritation, as it prevents the Alexa rountine I have scheduled to test the alarm system once a week from working. However, you know there’s an issue as the test doesn’t go off and you simply go into Alexa and reauthenticate the Skill.
It’s definitely not a flawless system, but I don’t think there is currently anything better available that complies with the new regulations.
Regarding integrating sensors into Home Assistant, I have recently found that in addition to the IMAP Email Content integration I mentioned in the other discussion, you can also use the last_notification and last_notification_removed sensors in the Home Assistant Companion app on Android (you need to enable them in settings and I don’t think they exist in the iOS app) to create the sensors for FireAngel in Home Assistant. I prefer these to the email method, as you can use the last_notification_cleared sensor to clear an alert, which is not possible with email, as you don’t get sent an email to say that the alert is no longer active, only an email when there is an alert.
