Looking for a smart smoke detector to integrate in to home assistant, wondering if anyone has any advice - must have features:
actually be a decent detector (obviously can be as smart as you like, but if it doesn’t detect a fire, thats a problem) - the chinese ones kind of worry me
must be able to silence wirelessly (I have some high ceilings)
must be hard wired
must not be insanely expensive (kind of like the nest protect ones, but as I need about 6 of them… that gets pricey)
would like a somewhat ‘open’ protocol (was reading about a first alert one that they decided, nah we won’t support any more, disabling all the smart features…)
integration with home assistant, hopefully with ability to control from home assistant too…
Nice to have:
use as something other than a smoke detector when not saving my life (saw one that worked as an alexa), saw another that worked as a bluetooth speaker…
I just put in some of the First Alert Combo Z-Wave Smoke/CO2 detectors. Mine are battery but pretty sure they had a hard-wired. Work great and integrate locally with a Z-Wave dongle. Only thing they don’t do on your list is the remote silencing (at least I haven’t figured that out yet), but they will work to do automations off of alarms.
I saw those, was really hoping I was missing something there… I have vaulted ceilings on my upper floor, meaning many of my detectors are 20 ft up. So far they haven’t alarmed, but can easily picture a false alarm any no way to shut them off without killing power to the circuit…
You could go crazy lol, buy an “extra” detector and hook it up somewhere within reach or if you really want to mess around with it, crack the extra one open and figure out a way to hookup a relay to the silence button using an esp8266 and something like esphome/tasmota then you can silence from HA.
Of course you would need the ability to run wires, which is/was easy for me in my basement since I have a drop ceiling.
Very interesting… of course I’ve already taken the plunge and said ‘screw it I’m going with nest protect’.
Curious - can’t seem to find - do these have a ‘remote silence’ feature? If not thats a deal breaker for me anyways. My ceilings are pretty high, and I can’t be pulling out a ladder to silence a nuisance alarm….
I have one of the First Alert Smoke/CO detectors, using z-wave aeotec dongle and it works well. I have a few automations set up in Node Red such as phone app notifications and all house lights on when it alarms. I think I found the information such as the sensors and attributes to use on this forum. I have found the battery reporting to be strange, the low battery chirp started when the battery reported 77%. The Smoke and CO alarms are reported in the HA sensor differently so you can tell which alarm type it is.
Any chance anyone knows of movement on an integration? Looking to change my existing Kidde detectors to the smart ones, and would love to have it integrated with HA.
Even if this can be integrated, it would be a cloud based integration subject to change at the whims of the manufacturer, and could even be shutoff at anytime.
I would not rely on an online integration using an API for something as critical as a smoke alarm activating. Actually, I wouldn’t rely on cloud based integrations for anything anymore as I’ve been burned too many times by them failing.
Instead, you might want to look at this option to make your existing detectors smart and use Zwave, an entirely local and standard protocol. If they are wired and interconnected you would only need one relay and can keep your existing detectors.
That does appear to be a good solution if you’re only looking for a binary sensor. If you’re looking for supplement attributes (replacement, faults, etc.), and methods (triggering tests, sending a hush command, etc.), then you’re back to the API for now.
Update- I don’t currently see it on Amazon, but it is available on the ring website. Since it’s zwave, it doesn’t need the ring hub and would work with a zstick running zwavejs
That looks nice - and would get rid of the stupid Ring listening thing that never seems to work. I’m assuming no remote shutting it up if there is a false alarm? My broomstick and vaulted ceiling routine is getting old
