I made the mistake of investing in a bunch of First Alert ZCOMBO z-wave smoke alarms. All setup fine in HE. I've now learned through extensive forum searching that there is no way to trigger these alarms (from HE or other z-wave devices). That appears to be settled science.
Moving to the workaround... I would like to have a similar experience that interconnected alarms would give me. Would the best course of action be to purchase z-wave/zigbee sirens and place those around the house? Then, build automations to trigger those? I think that's what the best path will be but looking for someone that has done the same thing. I'm also hoping someone can suggest a cheap, plugin siren in either z-wave or zigbee that will work.
Both of these work with any generic smoke detector. The Zooz is probably the cleaner and nicer option in my opinion, but I have the Ecolink and it has worked fine for a couple years now. I test it every time I broil something in the oven!
I also have those detectors tied into Hubitat Safety Monitor. I use 2 of these sirens as well with Hubitat Safety Monitor and they are loud. They plug into house current but have a battery backup inside.
I have a Zcombo out in the garage. I wouldn't really be able to hear it in the house. I installed an Ecolink chime siren. It has the alarm sounds for both smoke and CO and is quite loud. If I really wanted to make sure I'd hear it, I'd put another one upstairs. But, I'm also using it for voice announcements, which don't have the volume of the alarm sounds, but still, I've slept through a couple "Hub CPU Usage Is High" warnings, lol, which is fine by me.
It might not be a bad setup: the siren would go off as well as the detector affected. At least you would know which detector was going off. My wired interconnected units have little flashing leds that you have to study.
The Ecolink chime/siren plugs into the wall but also has a backup battery.
Thank you for the recommendation. I do also have the ZEN55 going into 3 wired interconnected alarms. The ZCOMBO's are for the rest of the house that those don't cover. The problem is more with alerting me to the problem.
Sorry for the many replies. Still getting used to this forum style/software.
Do any of you know if a ZCOMBO going off could use Hubitat Safety Monitor to trigger a ZEN55 to set off wired/interconnected alarms? 3 of those going off would be a hell of a siren.
I don't think the ZEN55 has the ability to trigger the Alarms, it only listens on the interconnect wire. I wrote the custom driver for it, in conjunction with Zooz, so I know the functionality of it better than most.
