I recently got some Shelly smokes. First of all, it was a pin to integrate them. Real headage.
But I could do it, finally. But they don’t update the smoke status. If I do a test alarm, it will update that the device is online, but the smoke detection stays at no.
Like this, I obviously cannot use these devices to trigger automations.
Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this? I can upload custom scripts to the shelly. Maybe I can create some sort of my own endpoint and let the device contact the endpoint, so I am not dependent on the obviously buggy Shelly Addon.
Also, I don’t like, that I don’t get daily updates from my smoke detectors. So if you have any other HA compatible Smoke detectors that work just fine, please let me know.
I have Nest smoke alarms, for which there is a custom integration. As with yours it is not possible to test the smoke detection.
I think this is a fact of life with smoke alarms - any tests you can do check the siren etc. not the actual smoke detector, which is triggered by particles in the air. The only way to do that is to blow real smoke at it.
Amazon sell aerosols that you can use without causing any damage.
I use the Shelly Smoke Battery Status as a reliable indicator of the smoke detector communicating with HA.
If the Battery is not “Unavailable” than the smoke detector has transmitted the batter status to HA. Battery = “Unavailable” is a problem (actually, any sensor in an “unavailable” state is a problem).
Thanks for the response.
Okay, but this does not really solve my issue, or am I wrong?
Because I cannot send me a notification if smoke is detected because it will always say smoke detected: no. It won’t ever switch to yes.
And how can you do this with the unavailable state because my Shelly Smoke detectors are always unavailable. They only try to reconnect once they detect smoke (or I fire up the test alarm).
I even created the webhook, but still cannot request any info from the smoke detector via HA. I have to wait until there is an alarm. Real one or one I started manually. But even then it will only update battery but not smoke.
Are you seeing a battery reading from the smoke detector in Home Assistant? Can you see the state of the smoke entity as clear in Home Assistant? If yes, the smoke detector is communicating with Home Assistant ok. If no, you have a setup issue.
The smoke detector (and all Shelly battery powered devices) stay in a “sleep” mode to preserve battery life and only communicate if there is a change of state or when their wakeup timer expires to send a “keep alive” notice to Home Assistant. The device will go “unavailable” if the “keep alive” expires and no communication from the battery powered device.
You can only query the state of the entities kept in Home Assistant - you cannot query the state of the smoke detector directly when the smoke detector is sleeping.
The smoke entity will only change to not clear if there is actually smoke detected - the test button has no effect on the smoke entity status. If you want to see the smoke entity status change to not clear , you should buy a can of smoke as Jack mentioned above and test with that to simulate actual smoke.
Thanks for the response. Yes, I am using the official Shelly Integration.
I can see all the Data, but they won’t update. For example, battery life was last updated a week ago, and that’s when I set the smoke detectors up. But if I do a manual test alarm, it will update the battery state, but not the smoke detected state.
Okay, thanks a lot for the clear info about the smoke entity. I will test it out with actual smoke then. (But to be honest, in a way I don’t think it will change the status then. Because if I test it with a test alarm, it changes the smoke status within the Shelly app. So why shouldn’t it change in HA? But ill try with real smoke.)
But I got one more question:
How can I update the interval of the keep alive notice. Because I would like to have this alive info maybe once a day or at least once a week. But as of now, i don’t get it (only if I start the test alarm).
I don’t know if you’re ever seen them doing it, but this is how the fire department test alarms. My local fire department have a sort of hood thing on a stick that they can puff smoke into.
Hey, thanks for the response. Okay so when it’s typically 6 hours the smoke detectors don’t work correctly from my side. Because I have them in HA since maybe 1.5 weeks now, and I never got any status update. Except for when triggering the alarm by hand, as I explained before.
So what’s your suggestion now? Exchange the smoke detectors, or what should I do?
Home assistant will not record a change of state unless there is an actual change. So if battery = 96% and has not changed for 1.5 weeks, there will be no update in Home Assistant. My batteries go weeks, sometimes months before there is a change in the battery. The same is true for the smoke entity (test with a can of smoke to change the state).
When you press the test button, you are testing that the audible alarm works. You are not testing that the smoke detector detected smoke (use a can of smoke for this).
The app is displaying that the test button was triggered. There is no test button entity in the Shelly integration. You can put in a feature request for this.
