2021 smoke detectors

Posted on
Sun May 30, 2021 7:19 pm
nathanw offline
Posts: 152
Joined: Sep 05, 2011
Location: Boston, MA

2021 smoke detectors

My house has a set of First Alert OneLink smoke+CO detectors and the Insteon smoke bridge. I have a little bit of automation built around it with Indigo - sending me messages when anything happens, turning on every light in the house and shutting down the HVAC in case of an alarm, etc. They're OK but not great.

Last night at 3am the family was woken up by the whole system announcing the "malfunction" of the detector in the kitchen - seems that it's hit the lifetime of the CO sensor (7 years). At a technical level I appreciate that the system doesn't really have a better way to let me know what's up than to use its own alert system (and it has no idea what time it is), but it's rather frustrating.

As it turns out, 3 of my 7 detectors are that age, which is enough that I'm wondering if I should change my strategy. Any thoughts on the merits of a few different options:

1. More of the same, they're still available. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000EVO7C2
2. The "Smart" OneLink version. Square, 5-year-battery, sounds like it should interoperate with the other stuff I've got but also seems like it would fail the same way. https://www.firstalert.com/more-safety- ... 42136.html
3. The First Alert ZCOMBO - switches over to Z-Wave, but doesn't trigger the other alarms in my house, which seems like a problem (1890 house, probably not going to manage to hardwire alarms).
4. Change gears entirely. Nest Protect? X-Sense? Something else?

Posted on
Sun Jun 06, 2021 8:52 pm
whmoorejr offline
User avatar
Posts: 762
Joined: Jan 15, 2013
Location: Houston, TX

Re: 2021 smoke detectors

To summarize, you can use a relay that the connected smoke detectors think is just another detector to connect to indigo via an alarm panel or some kind of I/O device (zwave or insteon).

Not saying this is a better way... this is just how I did it....
When I got the house, all the detectors were aging and I wanted to add to the detection grid. Added heat detectors in the garage and a couple heat detectors in the attic. Added a smoke detector to my office, wife's craft room and one of the add-on bedrooms that didn't have one. This brings my total up to 12 smoke/heat detectors. For co2, I used the portable plug it types. My last 2 co2/smoke detectors failed a couple times and after the 3rd time getting the "all clear" from the gas company.... I decided to replace them with just smoke detectors and use dedicated CO2 detectors that I could place around bedroom areas.

For automation, I tied my detectors into my alarm panel "DSC" as a "Fire Zone" using a relay. The relay is wired inline with the other detectors and if anything goes off, the traveler wire (yellow or orange) the normally closed line on the relay changes to open. Indigo already sees my alarm panel so I can trigger off that zone to do whatever.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0039PF21U/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bill
My Plugin: My People

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