Recommended smoke detectors - reliability, no false alarms, battery life?

tsairo · September 3, 2025, 5:57pm

Just tried pairing one of these Nedis alarms with ZHA. It took a few attempts to finish, but in the end it still does not show any entities. Not even battery level.

SaschaKP · September 8, 2025, 8:37pm

github.com/esphome/esphome

Tuya low-energy wi-fi devices support

dev ← SaschaKP:dev

opened 12:45PM - 29 May 25 UTC

SaschaKP

+114 -22

# What does this implement/fix? this pull request implements tuya low-energy …devices that uses wifi modules combined with an MCU (battery powered - aka version 0) requirements in configuration for this to work: setup priority is essential, below an example ## Types of changes - [ ] Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue) - [x] New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality) - [ ] Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected) - [ ] Code quality improvements to existing code or addition of tests - [ ] Other **Pull request in [esphome-docs](https://github.com/esphome/esphome-docs) with documentation (if applicable):** - esphome/esphome-docs#<esphome-docs PR number goes here> ## Test Environment - [ ] ESP32 - [ ] ESP32 IDF - [x] ESP8266 - [ ] RP2040 - [x] BK72xx - [ ] RTL87xx ## Example entry for `config.yaml`: ```yaml preferences: flash_write_interval: seconds: 3 safe_mode: disabled: True esphome: name: heiman-smoke-ws2sa-5 friendly_name: tuya smoke detector name_add_mac_suffix: false external_components: - source: github://pr#8953 components: tuya refresh: 1h bk72xx: board: cbu logger: level: WARN #the lower the better for speed sake baud_rate: 0 mqtt: username: !secret mqtt_user password: !secret mqtt_password broker: [redacted] #down below we keep the device always available, even in offline, the MCU series exampled updates every 24 hours will_message: topic: payload: online birth_message: topic: payload: online ota: platform: esphome password: !secret ota wifi: ssid: !secret wifi_ssid password: !secret wifi_password switch: - platform: tuya id: snooze entity_category: config device_class: switch icon: mdi:volume name: Snooze Alarm switch_datapoint: 16 retain: True binary_sensor: - platform: template device_class: smoke name: Smoke Alarm id: smokealarm retain: True time: - platform: sntp timezone: Europe/Rome servers: [redacted] text_sensor: - platform: template name: "Last Restart" id: last_restart_mqtt update_interval: never device_class: timestamp icon: "mdi:clock" entity_category: diagnostic lambda: |- char result[32]; time_t ts_uptime = id(last_restart).state; strftime(result, sizeof(result), "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S+00:00", gmtime(&ts_uptime)); return { result }; sensor: - platform: wifi_signal name: Signal strength id: sensor_rssi update_interval: 500ms entity_category: diagnostic - platform: uptime type: timestamp id: last_restart entity_category: diagnostic internal: True on_value: - component.update: last_restart_mqtt - platform: tuya sensor_datapoint: 1 name: Smoke Data id: smokedata internal: True on_value: then: - lambda: |- if(x > 0) id(smokealarm).publish_state(false); else id(smokealarm).publish_state(true); - platform: tuya sensor_datapoint: 9 name: Autotest id: autotest internal: True - platform: tuya sensor_datapoint: 14 name: Battery Status id: battstate internal: True - platform: tuya sensor_datapoint: 15 name: Battery Level state_class: measurement device_class: battery entity_category: diagnostic unit_of_measurement: "%" accuracy_decimals: 0 id: battlevel retain: True uart: - id: tuya_uart rx_pin: RX1 tx_pin: TX1 baud_rate: 9600 parity: NONE stop_bits: 1 #this is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED for it to work, uart and tuya have precedence, in 2 seconds without response the device will deactivate itself setup_priority: 790 tuya: #required for this kind of devices low_energy: true #this is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED for it to work, uart and tuya have precedence, in 2 seconds without response the device will deactivate itself setup_priority: 780 #USING API mode is not suggested, since it takes too much time for the CBU #using API on esp32 is okay, just avoid it and use mqtt if you're on a less performing chipset #this template is for the Heiman smoke ws2sa-5 that is exactly equivalent to shelly plus smoke ``` ## Checklist: - [x] The code change is tested and works locally. - [ ] Tests have been added to verify that the new code works (under `tests/` folder). If user exposed functionality or configuration variables are added/changed: - [ ] Documentation added/updated in [esphome-docs](https://github.com/esphome/esphome-docs).

heiman smoke ws2sa-5, it’s not zigbee but wifi, but it seems pretty good to me (with esphome you could make it BLE)

Available on amazon and other places, it can be reprogrammed with esphome and is pretty good, see my pull request, I have it working for a pretty good amount of time, it works and with proper mods to software (don’t enable API! it’s damn slow!) it will do what you want it to do.

EDIT: this heiman thing is exactly similar in everything (except shelly uses esp32) to the shelly plus smoke. I have both of them, but wasn’t able to reprogram with esphome the shelly one, since the pinout is hidden for the GPIO0 and I don’t want to unsolder something, since shelly can do also mqtt

wigster · September 28, 2025, 4:31am

I picked up the Frient smoke alarms a couple of months ago. Well supported in z2m. No false positives inside our apartment including about 4 metres from the stove. But also so far — no positives.

haraldh · March 4, 2026, 4:01pm

I just bought one of these. Pairing in ZHA went fine. But then no sensors showed up in Home Assistant. It appeared in ZHA, but there’s nothing you could do with it. Returned it within an hour.