Struggling to figure this out. Any suggestions or advice?
If you don’t care of your local regulations for approved smoke/heat detectors, then Frient works nicely with Homey.
I even use the smoke alarm for the flood sensors I have, as you can toggle it on/off.
Next you struggle to find things, start with a search on the forum or on Homey’s apps. You’ll find many other Zigbee smoke alarms that work with Homey.
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Home automation is an area where Europe is ahead of the US especially smoke alarms. I’m certain the problem is UL certification and the US smoke alarm cartel has convinced the UL regulators that EU can’t make fire alarms because fire is different there. I’m being cynical.
At first I simply ordered a pair of Fabaro zwave Smoke alarms as these seem good to me. We can’t get them domestically so I was thinking I was being smart by getting them from Europe. While I was thinking they would ship US frequency versions to the US… what was I thinking? They shipped EU. I missed returning them on time and emailed the company that if they were going to be shipping zwave to the US they really should make it clear that what they ship, won’t work in the US. Annoying, I learned my lesson. No zwave from across the pond.
So what are our US options?
I’m a C# web developer, I sure I could develop a driver for First Alert, the company could make money having the only Homey Pro compatible alarm in the US/Canada. But I have a job, it’ll take a while.
It seems zigbee is compatible in the US and EU so Zigbee alarms should work in the US. I’m gun shy in trying. But EU alarms are not UL listed insurance companies might play that card. So if one goes that way they might want to back them up with US UL listed alarms.
Another alternative is to use a listener, theses.are not smoke alarms but instead listen for the sound of an alarm then when triggered they send a zwave or zigbee signal. Ecolink has this, just watch the prices. I’ve seen them at $40 to $70. The upper is a steep price for that. A solution if you already have alarms smoke or CO alarms. Not perfect because half the point is to get battery low alerts on your phone before getting the hideous low batter chirps.
For those with wired alarms can op to convert their existing to smart using a “SMOKE AND CO DETECTOR BRIDGE”, basically a relay. If I had a wired system I’d definitely go that way. Of course insurance companies might take issues with that to.
Anybody got more to add? Anything I missed?
hey Russel, were you ever Able to create something for first alert, as I have all these smoke detectors, and now that I have jettisoned smart things, I have no way of adding them to homey.
I think the problem isn’t Homey, it’s the US regulators don’t want to allow smart alarms (you know, they fear we’ll hurt ourselves). And so us American are left with few options. I want to connect my fire alarms to bed shakers because sound only fire alarms are of little use for sleeping hearing impaired.
Historically the zwave First Alerts have been an annoyance. I found both of mine battery dead with corroded batteries with no notice from my old SmartThings hub l on more than one occasion.
I’m currently using my First Alerts without the smart along with some other cheap alarms for now. Then using the Ecolink listener which listens for the sound of fire alarms. This device is zwave. We actually had a smoke event and this had proven itself.
The long plan is to install wired alarms and make them smart by adding a bridge relay like the Zooz ZEN55. There relays are connected to the red communication wire that sets off all of the alarms m and so works well. You only need one relay so put it in the area as the hub. This is a no brainer cheap way to go but installing wired alarms isn’t trivial.
There is something you could try. It’s a long shot. I’ve had occasions where devices would connect using a different band app. Try connecting using the Fibaro fire alarm app. Not likely to work but costs nothing to try.
After I retire from web programming I may pick up app programming for Homey.
If you really need to stick with battery alarms then also consider ordering zigbee or matter alarms from the EU. Be sure NOT to get zwave because the EU zwave uses a different frequency than the US.
Russell,
I want to thank you for the thorough reply to my initial post. The current status still has has me stymied. Perhaps progress will come as an upside of the company’s recent acquisition?
Please post if you, or anyone, learns about or comes up with a solution.
