Smart smoke detectors

The first priority of smoke/CO detectors is to get you out of the house. I’m assuming you are looking for battery powered detectors and not hardwired detectors. The advantage of the Nest Protect over the First Alert ZCOMBO is that they are interconnected, meaning that if one detector in the network goes off, they all signal an alarm. The main disadvantage of the Nest is the price. Having a “smart” smoke detector allows you secondary safety features, like notifications when you’re not home, or the ability to turn on/off other things in the house when an alarm is detected. For example, turn off the AC/furnace, turn on lights, etc.

I have four non-smart hardwired detectors and one battery powered ZCOMBO. Last time the Leeo was on sale at BestBuy I used a gift card and picked it up for $20. (It replaced a 7W incandescent night light, so it will pay for itself in about 200 years.) The Leeo also calls your phone when it detects an alarm, and if you provide secondary emergency contacts will go through the list of numbers until someone answers.

Yeah, what they said. I too have two Leeo’s because that was less expensive then outfitting my house with Nests. I also use IFTTT to have them show me weather conditions.

And they just announced that they can now “hear” certain water sensor alarms.

And they work. I have been called three times by Leeo now. I answer the phone, listen to my detectors go off, cancel their request to dial 911, then text my wife who tells me everything is okay, just smoke from cooking (maybe she doesn’t like them because now I know when she burns food?)

I like them and would buy them again if needed.

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Having all of my First Alerts, I feel adequately safe even without the smart features, they all talk to one another, no section of the house will be silent if one goes off, including the garage. Having the bridge to the smart features, via Leeo or the Insteon bridge I use, just adds a new dimension as @dama and @cdmobile point out. I really do think the Leeo is the best alternative now that I own some. It won’t detect the difference between my smoke and CO2 alarm though, since it’s the same alarm, the detectors just speak which is in alarm, but that’s very minor to me. Having both my Insteon and Leeo WiFi connections, I also have a small sort of redundancy to radio interference and power interference.

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Are you sure there isn’t also an also an audible beep alert for the CO detector which is played in between the verbal announcements?

The UL standard requires a distinction: the smoke detector is one Beep pattern (3 long beeps) and the CO detector is a different Beep pattern (4 short beeps).

The Leeo is set to recognize those beep patterns, not the verbal announcements. :wink:

I run the test, it says it found the smoke detector, then I assume gives up. I can’t make the First Alert do one or the other and not sure how to fake it with CO. :slight_smile:

There’s a FAQ for that :wink:

For the First Alert Combo:

You can test this Smoke/CO Alarm: Press and hold the Test/Silence button 3-5 seconds until unit starts to alarm.
During testing, you will see and hear the following sequence:
• The Horn will sound 3 beeps, pause, 3 beeps. The Power/Smoke LED
flashes Red and the CO LED will be Off.
• Next the Horn will sound 4 beeps, pause, 4 beeps. The Power/Smoke
LED will be Off and the CO LED flashes Red.

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My setup: Each room has the govt required linked smoke detector, then I put in a Zcombo in the laundry room and another in the garage (where there were no detectors). I also have two carbon monoxide detectors, one upstairs and another downstairs. Then two Leeo’s, one upstairs and another downstairs, set up to hear the smoke detectors and the carbon monoxide detectors. I’m tempted to buy Roost batteries for the regular detectors, but the reviews are not good. They revised their battery recently, so maybe later, but that is another cloud service I don’t feel like adding now.

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Being new to ST’s one of the first items I wanted to address was security and safety. I have a pre-wired smoke/CO2 detectors that are interconnected. Is there a solution to replace one so that if any go off I get a notification?

Nest has a detector that is hard wired and interconnected with more of it’s own kind. I’m not sure you could install it in concert with your other existing detectors while still preserving the interconnection or not.

PhilB. Thanks for the reply. I know Nest and others do within their own network, but want to replace all of my detectors. It would be nice to just replace one and get an alert. When I’m away I don’t care which alarm goes off, but that any of them have gone off.

You could try a Leeo.

ErnieG,

I may in the meantime, but I’d prefer to have something hardwired vs relying on hearing a noise. Its a trust thing.

Thanks!

The question of interconnect with a mix of smart and dumb detectors came up in a thread about Halo a while back.

If I remember the gist of the discussion, it was that pretty much any smoke detector manufacturer will guarantee that their interconnect function will work with devices of their own brand only. For smart and dumb detectors. Not sure why that isn’t standardized.

Mark,

Thanks! This is what I wanted to hear. My home is currently wired with First Alert SC07CN. It sounds like I can replace one with a CO501CN-3ST and be able to push that to ST.

Only way to find out is to try I guess.

Thanks!

Hmm, not sure if I’m understanding what you’re trying to do now.

That’s a battery powered smoke/CO detector. It has no interconnect function, but it can be set to announce the location of the alarm that is going off (from the speaker on the device itself).

https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-SCO7CN-Battery-Operated-Combination/dp/B0002CWXZG

Do you mean SCO501CN-3ST? That’s also a battery-operated smoke/CO detector, although this one does have a wireless interconnect feature.

https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-SCO501CN-3ST-Operated-Combination/dp/B000EVO7C2

So I’m confused by what you mean when you say your house is currently wired with SC07CN; that’s a battery-only device.

If you have several battery-operated detectors without interconnect (SC07CN), and you replace just one with a battery-only detector that has a wireless interconnect (SCO501CN-3ST), then what is it you’re hoping to accomplish?

Also just to be clear, the wireless interconnect on the SCO501CN-3ST does not mean it can connect to SmartThings or any other home automation hub.

The first alert zsmoke and zcombo work with SmartThings because they use z-wave, unlike the proprietary wireless protocol that connects a group of the SCO501CN-3ST devices.

Halo can be integrated with ST because it supports zigbee. I don’t have a nest protect, but I assume any integration with ST must be cloud-to-cloud.

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Had the wrong part numbers in front of me. The correct ones are SC7010B and 9120B. They are hardwired and interconnected. My question is do they make a version that is hardwired that is zwave compatible? When any alarm is triggered the others go off via the interconnect wire. I wanted to get a notification if away from the house.

Unfortunately no. The only z-wave models are battery powered.

You can get a halo and connect it physically to your other detectors. Halo can then connect wirelessly to your ST hub.

You should check their website or that forum thread I linked to above, about how well the wired interconnect with non-halo devices has been working.

I don’t have the interconnect wires in my apartment, so my halo has no other detectors to connect to.

But I do like the way it can connect wirelessly.

And the z-wave detectors made by first alert are good with ST too.

Thanks for all of the information. I’ll check out the halo.

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If you’re mainly interested in a device that will tell you remotely that one of your smoke detectors is going off, you could look into the smoke (and CO) relays made by kidde and first alert. People have had success connecting them to z-wave contact sensors that can accept external inputs.

This can be assigned a device handler so that it would basically tell you that something went off on your interconnect wire. It couldn’t be more specific than that, but I’m not sure if you can get that now with the wire.

I use Leeo Leeo Smart Alert Smoke/CO - $29.15 to connect make my hardwired smoke detctors integrate with Smartthings via IFTTT.

I used the [RELEASE] Universal Virtual Device Type and Translator to create a switch with the Smoke attribute. When Leeo detects an alarm, it triggers IFTTT to turn my Smartthings “Smoke Switch”. Smartthings treats it as a smoke device and will integrate it with Smart Home Monitor.