Hard Wired (AC) Z-wave or zigbee Smoke &CO Detectors

Hi Mike, The only ones are the discontinued Halo Zigbee Alarms. Sometimes available on E-bay. They work well and even talk, and act as zigbee repeaters. The HALO+ has a weather radio built in(only adjustable on ST). I set mine on ST for the WWB, then moved to HE. Got a tornado alert last week announced, scared the heck out of the wife & girls. And they never need batteries, built in lithium backup( 18650 type cell)
Too bad they are no longer made.
I just snagged one Halo+ from ebay for 55. They do popup from time to time

1 Like

Yes. But not because they distinguish speech. I believe all smoke/co alarms have to emit a different tone for a fire emergency vs a carbon monoxide alert. So the emitted tone, before the spoken alert, permits the Ecolink Firefighter to distinguish between the two.

2 Likes

How are you able to achieve this? When I move mine from ST to HE I had to reset the unit which clears all the weather settings :thinking:

That’s correct, the alert tones for smoke and CO are standardized by UL certifications in North America.

BTW someone mentioned CO2 above re: nest protect devices. CO2 = carbon dioxide, and nest protect does not alert for carbon dioxide; neither do any other carbon monoxide (CO) detectors.

3 Likes

Oh, so you wanna know my secret? It's gonna cost you.
Please paypal $0.10 USD to haha@joking.com.

Seriously tho,
1.Pair to HE, leave paired
2. Reset Halo by pushing button for 20 seconds
3. connect to ST and make all settings, frequency and alert selection, save them
4. put HE in zigbee pairing
5. remove the halo from ST, using the app-not the button. It won't say "clearing all settings" but will flash and start pairing.
6. HE says "found previously paired" device

That's what worked for me.

4 Likes

I recently replaced all my smoke detectors; my house has them hardwired and interconnected. I wanted notification if they went off, but I don't want the smoke detectors at all involved in my home automation. I went with regular hardwired, interconnected detectors by Kidde. To link them, I used a Ecolink Firefighter, which mounts next to one of the detectors and listens for the specific sound they output.

(there is also a interconnect relay I could have used, but this was a simpler installation, and the two systems are completely independent)

I corrected that. I did honestly mean co. Not kidding, I had a box of c02 cartridges on my desk I was breaking up for my pannier bags (I use c02 inflators) I obviously wasn't paying attention to what I was typing :crazy_face:

2 Likes

Get a contact sensor. Go Control is preferred because it has a spot to hookup external devices. If you can't get one with external hookups and are even slightly competent at soldiering, you can use any contact sensor and remove the reed switch, or just soldier on either side of it to hook up...

Then you add the contact sensor to your Hubitat. when the smokes get kicked, it trips that relay, which opens the contact on the sensor, and Hubitat now knows there is an alert.

There is 1 issue of that is the relay has only 1 output and triggered by either Smoke or CO detected.
Some might prefer able to differentiate them. The 9V (AC I think, not sure) interconnect wire carries a signal that tell other connected alarm that is smoke or CO detected.
I don't have EcoLink FireFighter but I think it can tell different smoke and CO alarm sound?

Someone at ST forum got reply from First Alert support saying they've been working a hardwired model, but that has been many months and no update.

As noted above in this thread, that’s correct.

Over a year, I believe.

As @trunzoc stated above just go with the interconnect relay. You will have to be able to access this interconnect wire in your existing hard-wired smoke alarm setup, but this isn't to hard to do. Once you have the interconnect relay installed just hook it up to a device that is linked to hubitat. I personally like the zooz zen16, cause you can use it for more than just your smoke alarm interconnect (it has three separate connections for contacts). And if you really want to get creative and have a ton of time to spare, you could hook it up to an arduino device (through hubduino) and then actually be able to have hubitat know when the alarm is for smoke and when the alarm is for carbon monoxide, apparently the signal sent through the interconnect is different for these two alarm states and an arduino can pick that up.

Why didn't you tell me this BEFORE I got rid of my ST hub :man_facepalming:t2:

Anyone have an ST hub they want to sell me for $20? :joy:

Does anyone know of a hard wired smoke detector that can connect to Hubitat? I'm open to zwave, zigbee, wifi, etc. Would be great to have these integrated, but again it must be hard wired.

Install regular hardwired smoke detectors and use an Ecolink FireFighter to be able to trigger on the detectors going off.

6 Likes

If you don't like @jlv's suggestion (which is what I use, btw), here's an alternative:

Use regular hardwired smoke detectors and connect one of these relays along with a contact sensor with external contacts (like ones made by Ecolink and GoControl):

4 Likes

I’ve got one of those Kidde relays, works well.

1 Like

I had a Halo wired smoke/co detector in my old place. They could connect to Hubitat with zigbee, but they went out of business.

Never found another wired zigbee smoke detector. But like others above, I tried the ecolink firefighter device and don’t use smart smoke detectors anymore.

1 Like

Thanks guys. I like the relay idea, less battery maintenance and less room for audio detection error IMHO. . How did you wire the relay into a string of smoke detectors? Any pics to share?

It’s not easy to cram the relay into a standard depth wallbox with the smoke detector wiring, but it can be done.

1 Like

Thanks for sharing. Any spec for the external contact sensors? Amazon link? So the relay above would send 120v to the contact sensor when smoke is detected which then signals Hubitat?