IN 2015 I bought 6 Nest Protects (5 wired and 1 battery). For 10 years they worked perfectly and I liked them a lot. As their expiration date approached, I needed to replace them and started looking for replacements. I found that First Alert was about to release a plug-and-play replacement, the SC5, for the Nest. So, I preordered 6 of the First Alerts.
I received them a couple of months later and installed them with no problem. About two months later, one of the First Alerts started giving false smoke alarms, usually in the wee hours of the morning. The false alarms woke up my family and scared all of us, including the dogs. After three false alarms, I contacted First Alert and after a ridiculously long and frustrating call, they agreed to send me a replacement and asked me to return the defective alarm.
I receive and installed the replacement. Over the next few months, five of the six alarms, including the new replacement, began giving multiple false alarms. Most of these alarms were, again, in the wee hours of the morning. I called First alert again and endured an even more painful tech support call. First Alert agreed to send me five replacement alarms and this time they did not want me to return the defective alarms.
Well, last night, in the wee hours of the morning again, several more false alarms occurred. I have had it and based on my online research I am far from alone.
Do not ever buy a First Alert product.
I would appreciate a recommendations for a Smoke/CO Alarm that won't wake me up for no reason. It would be nice if it integrated with HE; but integration is not necessary.
I had a Nest Protect (1st Gen) but they never opened up all the sensors like was originally discussed, so it did not do everything I wanted. When it needed replacement, it was not replaced by another...
While I had that I bought multiple of the Halo smoke/co alarms, and they were awesome. Had no issues with false alarms, was able to integrate well, could use the LED ring for other status (it was controllable RGB) etc... LOVED them... but the company went under... and they are all long past expiration and properly disposed off... Very sad about that one since nobody has come close since.
Got a couple First Alert battery ones and they have worked well for us (no false alarms and battery life) EXCEPT that at least one (maybe both) are declaring themselves as expired in the Hubitat logs... but they have years left on them (even according to their labels). Not sure what to make of that one, so just ignoring that for now.
Same here. Are you, by any chance, on a latest zwavejs firmware (that was pulled?) I believe I started seeing these messages after the upgrade. /hub/zwaveVersion shows 7.23 for me.
I just ignored it anyways and never even bothered to check the forum if someone was having an issue with it or such as I figured it was most likely something with the device rather than the Hubitat.
I'm going to miss my Nest Protects when they get past their 10th birthday. I've had zero issues w/them, and family really likes how they operate & warn & voice info provided. I'll replace them w/a top-rated mains-powered/interconnected solution when the Nests age out, and planning to use the the Zen 55.
I currently have about two smoke alarms in every position.
My house is wired for mains-powered smoke alarms that are interconnected, so I use them with a Zooz relay to detect if any one of them goes off (of course, there's no telling which one went off}. I then added z-wave ones that worked with my alarm system to enable professional monitoring. At the time, that was the only option I knew of.
In looking now, there appears to be a sweet looking Kidde one (RGCUAR-RW) that might work well. Even better, that one is hardwired and interconnected--so I only need one of them to bridge between the interconnected ones and the alarm system. And that one seems to allow professional monitoring to work.
My unique downside to that: Since the interconnected alarms didn't trigger the fire department (only the separate, z-wave ones), I used the Zooz relay to actually trigger all of the wired smoke alarms for intrusions. They make one heck of a lot of noise when they are all going off. I'll have to reconsider that if I change things up when my current alarms expire out.
