Hey everyone. I’ve been researching this a lot, but all the threads I saw on here were from multiple years ago, so I thought I’d start a new one for current opinions.
I’ve gone down the Home Assistant rabbit hole recently and with one of my smoke detectors recently passing its shelf life, I’ve been thinking about replacements that I can integrate into HA for things like telling me if they go off when I’m not at home and if so, doing things like unlocking my front door and opening my garage for people to more easily be able to get my pets out.
I live in Ontario, Canada and our provincial building code here requires smoke and CO2 detectors to be hardwired first, though a battery backup is fine. When searching around, I saw several recommendations for models that I either can’t buy in Canada or have been discontinued. There was one First Alert model people liked that was Z-Wave compatible, but it’s battery only for some bizarre reason so that’s a no go. Some people also liked the Nest smoke detectors, but they’re expensive and I seem to recall reading that Google’s making those devices harder to integrate with HA?
In an old thread on here, someone recommended a Z-Wave listener device that I guess listens for the actual audible tone of any alarm and then signals HA. This would serve the core function of alerting me when I’m not home and triggering other automations, but obviously doesn’t let you do things like see battery health, silence the alarms remotely etc. I’d also need to get a Z-Wave receiver for my server, but that’s no big deal.
It seems getting one of those, plus a couple of good non-smart hardwared Smoke/CO2 detectors would be my best bet, but if there are options that are hardwired and can fully integrate into HA beyond just triggering an alert, I’d love to know of options I can actually acquire in Canada.
Yeah, that’s basically what the Z-Wave listener device track would be. The only bummer is it limits what HA can do with them in that case. I was hoping there was a wired detector out there that could also do HA, but not sure if that’s the case. If not though, the listener seems to be the best route.
Doesn’t look to be available in Canada sadly. That looks like Schneider’s Australian division. If I try to Google that model in Canada, I just get a page about a replacement battery. Bah!
Have you looked at the Zooz Zen 55 DC Signal Sensor. It ties into to the series of smoke and CO2 detectors and interfaces via z-wave. I have this on my dashboard and they can be tied into automations.
Hunh, this is a neat thing! So kind of like the ratgdo32 I’m using with my garage door, this I guess would go between the smoke detector and the actual house wiring and handles the signalling to HA? That might do the trick and would stay code compliant. I’ll check into it!
It ties onto the last smoke detector in the chain and monitors the common line for communication. All of my smoke/CO2 alarms are scheduled for replacement in 2027 and I don’t have to buy anything special just replace with like kind and I am good to go. Fulfills my mantra for Home Automation that things work without the home automation but HA makes the experience easier and more robust.
Yeah, I just looked up the product and the video on its page and this will do very nicely. Still only good for notififying when it goes off and not managing it, but the latter is a nice to have anyway and this feels more reliable to me than having an entire secondary device listening for sounds instead. And I can get both that and Zooz’s Z-Wave LR stick for about $100 total here in Canada. Definitely going to look into this when I get paid next.
