Other than Nest, does anyone know of any AU-certified 240v smart smoke alarms?
My main desires are:
Remote hush
Self-test
Network notifications
The one that’s actually a requirement for me is remote hush. The fire department has already been forced to enter my property once before due to a faulty smoke alarm which was going off for an hour and causing my dog a lot of distress.
Network notifications is also a fairly low priority as I can set my security cameras to listen for smoke alarm sounds and notify me if they hear one.
I don’t specifically need it to connect to Home Assistant, but some form of access would be nice - even if it were a cloud-based API.
Your only real option is Nest Protect wired unfortunately. Very expensive if you intend to do the whole house with them - especially considering you need a sparky to install them. The Nest integration looks like it should work decently in HA now, or you can also just get notifications/control directly through Google Home.
What I ended up doing was just got some cheap wired ones from Bunnings then set up my NVR to be able to monitor for the sound of the smoke alarms via my security cameras. Then it triggers an event/sends me a notification that the alarms are going off. No remote hush, but the price differential was not worth that ability.
I bought a couple of Google Nest Smoke Detectors operating on batteries so no need for a sparky.
I put one in the kitchen on the first floor and the second one on the top floor and linked them. They work great, just not with Home Assistant (Home Assistant seems to integrate with other Nest hardware but not the smoke alarm)
Depending on the state you’re in, new battery-powered detectors may be illegal. In QLD you can only replace battery powered ones with fixed 10-year battery smoke alarms or with wired/interconnect alarms. There’s also strict new rules about having a smoke alarm in every bedroom if you end up doing any major renovation work/sell the house.
I have the old ones that run on the 9v battery and have to replace one - I was hoping there were some suggestions for QLD interconnected smoke alarms which can be integrated into HA (one can hope). I need to get the sparky out to have a look at one of my circuits so I thought it would be worth getting them to install the smoke alarms that meet the current code.
I will report back if I have any luck with something that plays nicely with HA - but I am not holding my breath - probably easier to have a mic listening for the alarm, and pulling it into HA that way.
If you’re looking at renovating (or even selling) any time in the next 5-10 years, I would recommend skipping battery powered entirely, and going straight for hardwired. The legislation is quite clear that you need wired smoke alarms (with lithium battery backup) going forward.
Smoke alarms must be either hardwired or powered by a non-removable
10 year battery, or a combination of both may be allowed.
So you can have either wired OR battery powered as long as that battery meets the battery standards they set out - 10 year battery and non-removable.
I’m looking to hook a new set of interconnected smoke alarms into home automation if possible as well.
It seems many of these alarms that meet the required standard (AS 3786-2014) will use 433.92 MHz radio frequency (seems there’s some variations, 433.42MHz and others) for their comms. So it might be workable to get a 433 RF bridge (like the Sonos or similar) to interface with the devices then automate them in some ways.
Keen to see any specific brands/models anyone has experimented with for this.
I’d be keen to see your smoke alarm make and model numbers so I can try others.
What Sonoff device are you using as well?
What firmware did you try to modify with?