Make really irritating noise whenever something is wrong.
And exactly two definitions of wrong: smoke and low power.
The incorporation of convenience features entirely defeated the purpose of smoke detectors. It made them less likely to save lives.
There are still IOT smoke detectors in the commercial space for air ducts. And instead of noise, they signal a monitored central station in facilities in working relationships with the local fire service. Hospitals for example.
That's not your house.
The limited life expectancy of smoke detectors created an attractive recurring purchase model for Nest. It over-ruled life safety effectiveness. I suspect, but have no evidence beyond circumstantial, that lawyers, regulators, and insurers all said things that made financial accountants remodel projections.
> A smoke detector has exactly one function. Make really irritating noise whenever something is wrong.
No that’s one of two functions. The other one is letting me know if there is something burning even when I’m not home. It’s not nearly as important as the first job and a device should never do the first job worse because of it. But it can come in handy.
A good connected fire alarm can do all kinds of things like closing all windows or work as a siren for a home alarm.
In no situation should they ever be dependent on a cloud service, not even for “additional” features beyond the beep-when-there-is-fire function.
I dunno, I don’t see a problem with progressive enhancement of a dumb device: Clearly, don’t control the screecher with a web-connected microcontroller. But if it’s a totally standard dumb fire alarm that also outputs a voltage to a microcontroller that sends an alert to your smart home platform of choice? I don’t see the downside. And if it has a 90% chance of alerting you that your fire alarm has gone off when you’re out of earshot of the irritating noise? Why not?
I like the second kind of wrong. My smoke sensors start to make random short bleeps. I have about 10 of them in our house. Usually it will take at least annoying 15 minutes to locate the culprit.
I disagree. My dumb detectors started false positives after just a few years. Their mute/silence buttons didn't work so burnt toast meant two minutes of screeching. No options for remote alerts (without external smart hardware). Batteries would only fail at night even after a few years. Or dust? Or carbon monoxide? Never knew, because the beeps were a terrible form of communication.
Smoke detectors SHOULD have some safe, reliable smart technology. All my Protects have outlasted the simple Kiddes.
Do you have examples of Nests failing more frequently than normal alarms? The connectivity is not useless and is one of the reasons I bought them, 12 of them for my house. If you live in even a medium sized house you have a lot of rooms such that having ALL the alarms go of telling you the specific room the smoke is in can make a huge difference.
Not to mention that these alarms do both types of smoke/fire and carbon monoxide all in one.
433MHz coupled wireless smoke detectors are about as cheap as ones without. And their signal can be intercepted by a cheap Rflink device: http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/devlist
Granted they are not as fancy as a Nest, but you can buy 5 of these for the price of 1 Nest. And the Nest's aren't flawless either. I've had to reconnect 2 of the 3 Nest's at my parent house multiple times now and also a Google account is now required.
I got a zwave product that you mount next to your normal smoke detector. It listens for the alarm. When it hears it, it sends a zwave notification. Works great!
I also have laser particulate sensors hooked to esp8266s for dramatically higher resolution smoke/air quality detection. They go over Mqtt to home assistant for graphing, automations, etc.
I’ve read about all sorts of alarms (I don’t think smoke, but fire and other emergency alarms) running on things like ISDN before the term IoT ever existed
The only thing I would be looking for out of a smart smoke detector is remote notification and I already achieve this using my Wyze cameras. They are set to listen for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. They will notify me if detected. The notification also triggers other actions such as all the lights in the house being turned on.
Nest Protects are still around and are amazing. So much better than the garbage Kiddes I had before (a working mute/silence button? What a concept!). The self tests and green Ok light at night are comfort boosters. And the voice announcement of the alarm level and location are great features.
Given how many stories there are of IOT devices being hijacked for bitcoin mining or hacked in other ways I am extremely grateful that my smoke alarms are dumb as bricks.
They have a very small amount of radioactive material (~1.0 microcurie of the radioactive element americium-241) that is used as part of the detector, and it does what you’d expect it to do: it decays.
Consumer Reports can and should do better being a bit more verbose for correctness.
> Could I build my own out of a Pi and some scavenged components? Sure – but I can’t be bothered
More importantly, no insurance company will cover costs from a fire if they find out that you had a self built smoke detector which didn't pass standard quality checks. I think in the UK landlords must do a yearly smoke detector check as part of home owner regulation so a self built device might have failed at that point as well.
> More importantly, no insurance company will cover costs from a fire if they find out that you had a self built smoke detector which didn't pass standard quality checks.
Is this a thing? Where?
Are there similar things for burglar alarms where your insurance doesn’t pay or has a more expensive premium because of lacking alarm systems?
Making a fire alarm smart should never affect the normal functionality. They should of course always be certified the same way. One thing that could be worse is battery time, especially for high power wireless like 802.11, but a workaround for that could be to have two separate batteries and let it fail to a dumb alarm when the IoT battery is dead.
A workaround could be a completely separate device placed next to a standard, certified smoke alarm that just listens for the alarm. That'll cover the "remote alerts" part at least.
As technology propagates into everything one would be wise to comprehend the management of such devices that are connected regardless of the function. Significant home automation adoption is coming and some have decades of experience in building those changes. Where there is smoke usually fire leads.
Just have something In the room listen for the horrific screeching of a fire alarm. Then have it send you an sms or whatever. No need to cal it a “fire” anything and no regulatory hurdles to overcome.
[+] [-] brudgers|5 years ago|reply
A smoke detector has exactly one function.
Make really irritating noise whenever something is wrong.
And exactly two definitions of wrong: smoke and low power.
The incorporation of convenience features entirely defeated the purpose of smoke detectors. It made them less likely to save lives.
There are still IOT smoke detectors in the commercial space for air ducts. And instead of noise, they signal a monitored central station in facilities in working relationships with the local fire service. Hospitals for example.
That's not your house.
The limited life expectancy of smoke detectors created an attractive recurring purchase model for Nest. It over-ruled life safety effectiveness. I suspect, but have no evidence beyond circumstantial, that lawyers, regulators, and insurers all said things that made financial accountants remodel projections.
[+] [-] alkonaut|5 years ago|reply
I disagree
> A smoke detector has exactly one function. Make really irritating noise whenever something is wrong.
No that’s one of two functions. The other one is letting me know if there is something burning even when I’m not home. It’s not nearly as important as the first job and a device should never do the first job worse because of it. But it can come in handy.
A good connected fire alarm can do all kinds of things like closing all windows or work as a siren for a home alarm.
In no situation should they ever be dependent on a cloud service, not even for “additional” features beyond the beep-when-there-is-fire function.
[+] [-] heisenzombie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sagolikasoppor|5 years ago|reply
Its good because otherwise a fire could start in one section of the house without me waking up for example.
[+] [-] nojokes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seized|5 years ago|reply
Smoke detectors SHOULD have some safe, reliable smart technology. All my Protects have outlasted the simple Kiddes.
[+] [-] hellisothers|5 years ago|reply
Not to mention that these alarms do both types of smoke/fire and carbon monoxide all in one.
[+] [-] grammarprofess|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardobeat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aequitas|5 years ago|reply
Granted they are not as fancy as a Nest, but you can buy 5 of these for the price of 1 Nest. And the Nest's aren't flawless either. I've had to reconnect 2 of the 3 Nest's at my parent house multiple times now and also a Google account is now required.
[+] [-] acidburnNSA|5 years ago|reply
I also have laser particulate sensors hooked to esp8266s for dramatically higher resolution smoke/air quality detection. They go over Mqtt to home assistant for graphing, automations, etc.
[+] [-] yftsui|5 years ago|reply
I just enable Alexa to listen for smoke alarms and send me a notification when I am away.
[+] [-] edent|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yetihehe|5 years ago|reply
https://ferguson-digital.eu/produkt/gsm-smoke-detector-fs2sd...
[+] [-] edent|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_only_law|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tssva|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seized|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyyzy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tssva|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixothree|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Johnwbh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lights0123|5 years ago|reply
> The life expectancy of smoke alarms is generally 10 years, after which point their sensors can begin to lose sensitivity.
Every website says they should be replaced every 7-10 years anyways, regardless of their smart-ness.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|5 years ago|reply
Consumer Reports can and should do better being a bit more verbose for correctness.
[+] [-] dustinmoris|5 years ago|reply
More importantly, no insurance company will cover costs from a fire if they find out that you had a self built smoke detector which didn't pass standard quality checks. I think in the UK landlords must do a yearly smoke detector check as part of home owner regulation so a self built device might have failed at that point as well.
[+] [-] alkonaut|5 years ago|reply
Is this a thing? Where?
Are there similar things for burglar alarms where your insurance doesn’t pay or has a more expensive premium because of lacking alarm systems?
Making a fire alarm smart should never affect the normal functionality. They should of course always be certified the same way. One thing that could be worse is battery time, especially for high power wireless like 802.11, but a workaround for that could be to have two separate batteries and let it fail to a dumb alarm when the IoT battery is dead.
[+] [-] Nextgrid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bokohut|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FounderBurr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hondadriver|5 years ago|reply
Soon...