Force polling of zwave Ecolink Firefighter

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I bought a FireFighter zwave smoke/carbon monoxide detector. (It lisens for the alarm of the real smoke detectors in the house.

I have KIDDE smoke detectors but the FireFighter does not detect the "tone" of the units for some reason.

So I decided to repurpose these as refrigerator temperature alarms (there is a temperature sensor in the FireFighter units)

But the temperature values are sent to the hub at 5-10 hour intervals. The Hubitat driver for the Firefighter does not give an adjustable send parameter, there are no options for changing anything, it's very basic.

Does someone now of a way to force poll a battery powered zwave device ?

Thanks.

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Zwave radios in battery powered devices spend most of the time sleeping and can't be polled. The sensors watch for changes and then wake the Zwave radios to report the change. As soon as the radios have completed the change report they go back to sleep. There is also likely a scheduled wake-up interval where the device will report things like battery status, but that may only be once or twice a day.

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I know that my Zooz and Aeotec devices can wake on an ajustable temperature difference but this driver doesn't have these options. I don't know if this can be implemeted in the driver itself or is it in the device ?

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I'm not sure what you mean by

If you are referring to devices that report temperature, that is the sensor detecting a change in temperature, waking the Zwave radio and reporting the change. They don't usually wake on a preset schedule just to report temperature. It is a battery-saving technique. The more often the Zwave radio is turned on the shorter the battery life.

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Quite honestly, I wouldn't bother trying to re-purpose these. I would complain to Ecolink and or see if they can be returned.

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How old are your smoke detectors. If they’re not that old, how close did you position the firefighter devices to each detector?

I have one of these devices but I don’t need to use it as a temp sensor. If the device itself has a parameter to adjust how often it sends a temp update, then try changing the driver to the basic z-wave tweaker temporarily, change the parameter you’re interested in, and then change back to the firefighter driver.

Edit: also, are you in the US? The firefighter relies on the standardized tone pattern and frequency that smoke and CO detectors make in the US. I believe it’s a UL standard, and TBH I have no idea if that applies to devices sold in other parts of the world.

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I know you didn't indicate an interest in troubleshooting, but I'd second the advice to see if Ecolink could set least help since the tones are supposed to be standardized. If you haven't read the instructions, the devices are supposed to be pretty close to the smoke detector, though I've personally had luck with them being a bit farther away (not that I'd recommend that). If you're only using the smoke detector "test" button, keep I've also noticed that the Ecolink takes more than one (i think just two) sequences of beeps before it registers the alarm, so testing two detectors in a row (one usually doesn't let me test it twice in a row fast enough to emulate a single real alarm) might be a way to see if it really does work. I'd avoid creating real fires as some have done to test. :slight_smile:

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I've done a lot of testing, the instructions say to place de FireFighter at 6 inches, I've tried all sorts of distances. Once it did register a CO alarm (my smoke detectors only dedect smoke by the way). I've contacted Ecolink by email and did all the tests that they asked but it never worked. I could try using 2 smoke detectors in a row like you said. I didn't try longer distances. Using the test button, the sequence is somewhat long (my ears think that anyway !) but maybe your right, I might be too short for this device. I need to do more testing.

Thanks !

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Sorry to slightly hijack this... Thanks for the description on how these operate.

It would seem like this might happen frequently, in say a room, a drafty room. How precise a Delta? Is every 0.1° enough to make the radio wake and report? Is there a way to configure that threshold? I have a couple that seem to report hourly, even when the heater turns on and I can feel a temp difference, it doesn't seem to report frequently enough. (Yes, battery above 70%; refresh on device page will eventually report). Thanks.

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The level of change required to wake a device is likely device specific. A device may have settable parameters so you would need check the device manual to see if that is possible. A .1 degree change is probably unlikely. I don't think either of us personnaly can detect a degree of change let alone .1 degree.
Here is what I get from a Samsung multipurpose sensor. This device has no settings available that I am aware of.

temperature 33.34 °F shed_door_sensor temperature is 33.34°F DEVICE 2019-11-04 10:44:48.210 PM CST
temperature 34.24 °F shed_door_sensor temperature is 34.24°F DEVICE 2019-11-04 09:40:51.983 PM CST
temperature 35.14 °F shed_door_sensor temperature is 35.14°F DEVICE 2019-11-04 08:33:37.473 PM CST
temperature 36.04 °F shed_door_sensor temperature is 36.04°F DEVICE 2019-11-04 07:06:32.471 PM CST

I think if detecting a very small change is important to you, I would look for something other than a battery powered device and something with a higher quality temperature sensor. Temperature sensing devices aren't hard to build. Arduino or ESP8266 could be good search term starting points. There are community drivers for devices built with those devices so getting an accurate reading and a configurable reporting interval into Hubitat is relatively easy.

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@zarthan is correct. You will probably need to change the parameters of this device because according to the manual. You can set a wake up between 1 hour to a week. Here's a link to the manual and parameters.

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From that manual, I saw this:

Z-Wave Plus Command Class Multi Level Sensor

The FireFighter™ has a temperature sensor built into the device and can be queried on a Wake Up Notification with a Multi-Level Sensor Get command. The sensor supports reporting both in Celsius and Fahrenheit.

and then

Wake-Up Notification

The sensor will wake up every so often to send a Wake-Up Notification to allow the life line master node controller that the sensor is now available for any queued messages that the controller may have for the sensor. The time between Wake-Up Notifications can be configured with the Wake-Up Notification command class to be between 1 hour and 1 week with interval steps of 200 seconds. The sensor will also send a wakeup notification whenever the case is closed.

From the first paragraph, it sounds like the device can be polled for the temperature on a more regular basis, and that the second paragraph says you can change how often it wakes up to see if there is a request queued. Does that sound correct?

I've got one of these and I find it doesn't send a report often enough. I'd like to hear from it at least once a day to know it's still there.
battery 100 % Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector battery is 100% DEVICE 2020-08-25 04:53:45.471 AM EDT
battery 100 % Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector battery is 100% DEVICE 2020-08-24 03:19:10.399 AM EDT
temperature 73.94 °F Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector temperature is 73.94°F DEVICE 2020-08-23 01:47:16.620 AM EDT
battery 100 % Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector battery is 100% DEVICE 2020-08-23 01:47:16.588 AM EDT
battery 100 % Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector battery is 100% DEVICE 2020-08-22 12:13:28.719 AM EDT
temperature 71.78 °F Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector temperature is 71.78°F DEVICE 2020-08-20 10:39:29.881 PM EDT
battery 100 % Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector battery is 100% DEVICE 2020-08-20 10:39:29.855 PM EDT
temperature 73.22 °F Ecolink Smoke/CO Audio Detector temperature is 73.22°F
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