First Alert Carbon Monoxide and Smoke Detector Model ZCombo

Do you mean the driver in the OP?

This thread was created a couple years ago. I don’t recall at the time, but my guess is they didn’t have a generic z-wave smoke/co driver built into the hub firmware when this driver was first created.

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That was also my assumption as well but I couldn’t tell because I just received the alarm a few months ago and just tried connecting it yesterday. The built-in driver actually seems to perform a similar job.

I have been using the Generic Z-Wave Smoke/CO Detector on my zcombos for months and it is working great.

I still do a battery pull on them regularly because the smoke detector doesn't seem to accurately report the remaining charge accurately.

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Just dropping this here for anyone watching this...the new gen 2 Z-Wave Plus Zcombo units are shipping. Costco has them (on sale now for 3 fo $79, and so does Amazon. The Costco site shows the updated Ring feature info but doesn't state they are Z-Wave Plus (though they are).

I've been thinking of looking for something like this. Is it possible to issue a command to the unit to make the siren turn on? Like, if one alarm fires, I can make all of them fire?

Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately, they are not linked/communicating in that fashion.

AFAIK you'd need to use HSM to have an alert from one detector to generate notifications/alerts w/other HE devices, like lights, sirens, smart speakers, etc.

All of my smoke detectors are currently hardwired. Are these hardwired and if not does anyone know of a way to convert them?

First Alert had planned to introduce a wired version this year, but I don’t think this is it.

You could certainly eliminate the battery with an adapter, but then you wouldn’t have battery backup. Probably life safety equipment isn’t the best place to rig something up that’s non-standard.

I, too, have a preference for hard-wired smoke/CO detectors, but now that there are batteries which will last the lifetime of one, I have no rational reason why.

I get and agree with your sentiment about life-saving equipment, do you know if it is possible to mount battery operated detectors on hardwired mounts?

Does this unit speak the alert with voice?

Nope, AFAIK they do not do any talking. That's why I have Nest in the kitchen and hallway outside our bedrooms, family prefers the talky stuff.

You can set up talky stuff with a Sonos or Echo Speaks though.

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I thought about that, but we only have speakers in the kitchen and office, they are "officially" banned from all other locations by majority vote of the family. And since my wife works from the office full time now, I usually find the office speaker unplugged because (even if the mic is turned off) "I don't want it listening to me while I'm working."

Also any external speaker link is additional integration point susceptible to failure. When the First Alerts need to be replaced in a couple years and there's no other good talky option, I'll probably go all Nest Protect.

I am a dum dum with this type of info. I travel a lot for work and would like to have some idea of a fire when it happens. I copied the code above and added to my driver code section, but I cannot discover the device. I have model Zcombo and it's date code is 2021 Mar 22, so I assume this is a 2nd gen. What am I missing? I have a compruter and a smoker alarm. Help!

Added two of these not long ago, make sure they are close to the hub we you try to pair them.

Got it sorted. I just needed to click on the "Compatible devices" link at the top of the page. That then took me to the list of devices that people have used. And the key was as follows, Press and hold the test button. Keep it held down as you slide the battery drawer closed. Then release after one beep.

Thanks for saying it should be easy, made me look again.

Does this report current or peak ppm of carbon monoxide? or it just reports alarm on/off status?

The Zcombo doesn’t report CO concentration, just alert or clear.

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Curious how did you reverse engineer the settings? Did you find a smart-things community driver, or are the flags & values documented somewhere on First Alert's website?

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