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.
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?