Okay, I know I’m throwing a lot of ideas out here, so this’ll be the last one… for now. Directly inspired during my post about the connected Alarm clock… a connected smoke detector.
The obvious advantage of this is a situation similar to that which inspired SmartThings originally… but instead of a flooding problem, a fire problem. A smoke detector goes off in your house but no one is home… Well, fortunately no one will get hurt, but because it’ll take a while before someone outside of the home notices a problem and alerts the fire department, the house fire could get very much out of control.
But if my smoke detector sends me an alert as soon as it goes off, I can take steps to alert the authorities right away and hopefully minimize the damage to my home.
Also, as I mentioned in the Alarm thread, a connected detector could trigger my alarm to go off too. If I’m upstairs in my bedroom, sleeping, listening to music or watching TV, I may not hear a smoke detector going off in my basement. If if triggers my alarm clock and maybe starts flashing connected lights as well, I’ll notice.
This is one that we have been thinking about. We have some people that were talking about hacking something of a prototype together. I had not seen the NetVox one, Eric. Interesting.
The one we were considering was a multi-sensor (smoke, heat, carbon monoxide, motion, brightness) and could, ideally just snap in to existing locations (most screw in with a half turn or something). Would be very cool to get multi sensors such as that in every room, where there is already existing wiring for them. I am not sure what sorts of additional compliance and certification requirements there are for devices such as these, but someone on our team has been looking into it.
It’d be great to have them all in one like that - at least heat, smoke, carbon monoxide… (motion and brightness would be sweet too…)
Heck - if you were looking for the all out - you could consider (although it’s detection is rare) a methane sensor for a couple bucks more… wouldn’t that help if there was a sewage backup into your basement? Just a thought.
But yes - to have sensors that would work with the system and provide you that alert would be fantastic.
Why not throw in a presence sensor while you’re at it? That would be really handy so all the necessities would be consolidated, eliminating the need for multiple units!
Not sure why you’d need a presence sensor in a unit like this Kyle. This unit wouldn’t be coming and going at all.
Or are you saying that it could detect the presence FOB? Therefore it could, theoretically, know which room in the house you were in? It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it would work. Right now my understanding is that the presence FOB works by like this: If the HUB can “see” the FOB, you’re home. IF the Hub can’t see the FOB, you’re not. The range for being able to “see” would therefore be relatively large… at least enough to get to all the rooms in your house. In order to be able to see that you’re in one room, but not the other, the “sight” distance would have to be VERY limited.
As most wireless technologies these days are more interested in penetrating walls and increasing range, I’m not sure there exists a standard which is designed to be limited by walls and space. It would probably have to be something home grown from the ground up.
It does make for some interesting possibilities though! I walk into my bedroom, and then lights turn on automatically. But not if the dog or cat walks in. I go to the den and the lights and the radio turn on. But if my wife walks in, just the lights go on, and if the radio is on, it turns off. If everyone leaves a room and no one walks in within 120 seconds, the lights turn off and the TV, if on, turns off.
If you wanted to get real crazy… if we get star trek doors: Have a sensor outside my bedroom door that opens the door if I or my wife walks by, but not if the kids do.
I was just curious if you had looked into this fire/smoke sensor any more? This would be the ideal to replace the current ADT system we have in the house completely with the smarthings hub.
I’ve been interested in this device as well. It would supercede the functionality of the current SmartSiren by adding detectors for some or all of the following: Smoke, Carbon Monoxide, (extreme) Heat, heck, maybe Radon?
In addition to the advantages of having a “connected” smoke detection system such as being alerted of a fire if you are not at home, a killer application that I envision is allowing for “safe smoke”- such as while cooking. When you’re cooking something that you KNOW will be smokey, you could set the smoke detector sensors to a 15-minute temporarily disabled mode. This ability prevents what most people usually do- removing the smoke detector battery and likley, forgetting to plug it back in.
That’s the killer application of a smart smoke detector for me!
If the smoke detectors in your house are interconnected, they can usually have a relay installed on one of the units, the relays can provide dry alarm contacts, or voltage. Couldn’t you then use this and something like the MIMOlite together? So instead of using the MIMOlite and Zwave to control an object, have it set so that if the relay sends a signal, the MIMOlite sends a message back to the base station, and then notifies your devices via an app? I have hooked up a smoke detector at work on a piece of equipment, when it detects smoke or flame, it instantly opens the circuit breaker to the equipment via a relay. Could something like this work? Should be easy to implement.
As an update to Eric’s post, I followed the link and the checked out their other products. It looks like they have a ZigBee HA smoke/heat detector in their range now. www.netvox.com.tw/Z-A01A%20Z-A02E.asp Still doesn’t look like they have a shop as such for purchasing.
I just happen to have negotiations with Netvox ATM. Their export mgr is linda_dai (at) netvox.com.tw
I doubt they deal in single units, but small orders around $1000 are OK.