4 words: I love you Brian
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For the IR, I second the Broadlink... I have 2 of them to make our cheap robot vacuums work twice as hard (why can they only be scheduled for once a day?).
I also totally agree for smoke detectors. I really like the Halo ones I have... But they went under so I only have 5 years to go. They are "near perfect" as an out of the way sensor/status device. A motion detector and maybe TTS and I am not sure what else I could possibly need from them. You get smoke, CO, and then other sensors (like I said, including a new equivalent that has motion) in a package that nobody thinks twice about. High WAF. Plus, she and the kids all like how I have made all of ours act as hallway nightlights (when triggered by other motion sensors).
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I have a Honeywell Prestige IAQ. It is probably the most powerful thermostat sold for residential and even light commercial use. It has humidification, dehumidification, ventilation, duct sensors, diagnostics, wireless indoor and outdoor sensors, dry contact sensor inputs, supports 4 heat stages, and more.
Unfortunately, it is hobbled by Redlink/TCC to put it politely. Despite the best efforts of people on this and other forums, it just isn't good with regards to integration with home automation. I mean it works, sort of OK, but not the way it should, and consistently. Constant drop-offs. Polling sucks. Very limited control.
Honeywell doesn't publish the various input sensor states in TCC. They don't publish the diagnostics. Both those are in-thermostat only. TCC is no better than your $50 wireless thermostat in this regard. And this is a $250-$300 thermostat.
I don't even mind the looks of the stat. But I would switch in a minute if I could find a Zigbee or Zwave stat that had the capabilities of the IAQ system. I would buy a new Redlink Gateway if it allowed Zigbee or ZWave.
But no, we have to lock you into the year 1990's finest technology.
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It’s all supply and demand of course. Average consumers don’t know what the heck Zigbee or Z-Wave is, and they sure are not going to add, or even take the time to learn how to add a hub ( or even care what a hub is). We get excited by this stuff, most people’s eyes glaze over within seconds of talking about it.
It’s taken 20 years just to teach people what WiFi is, and half of them still don’t understand. They think WiFi equals the Internet and have no clue that a strong WiFi signal doesn’t equal a solid and fast internet connection! 
So if you can make a device for $2 and sell it to 1000 people for $30, or you can make a device for $1 and sell it to 10,000 people for $20, which one feeds your family better? I’m not saying it is the way I like it, but the reasons that it is that way are clear to me.
That said, I’m happy I understood early on that for me anyway, a hub was a better choice. And happy I eventually found the best choice available to let me do just about anything I want locally, without having to build a homegrown hub.
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The Kidde detectors that were made for Wink will still work without the Wink hub. I just tested mine with the Ring Smoke/CO Listener. Turned off my old Wink hub (only still on because of the detectors) and the Listener notified my Ring system and also set things in motion on Hubitat because of the Ring Integration app from @codahq. The detectors are all interconnected so you don't get a specific location, just that an alarm sounded.
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If companies want to continue to manufacture wi-fi controlled devices, that's fine with me (2gHz and 5 gHz can pass information more quickly than 930mHz Z-Wave), AS LONG AS THEY PRIORITIZE LOCAL CONTROL OVER CLOUD CONTROL. Lifx is local control, but peovides cliud connectivity as well (Pull the WAN cable and they still work). You can't do that with Nest though.
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I'm not too concerned with the loss of remote alerting from the Kidde detectors during the work-from-home lockdown in the near term. I am using them as a supplement to our dedicated remotely-monitored alarm system's wired detectors, mainly so that I can call a neighbor to rescue the dog before a fire spreads too far. The proverbial lemonade that I'm making from the Wink announcement is re-evaluating my complete HA setup, to find things that I can do better (or properly) now as technology has changed over the years. Replacing the Kidde detectors with Honeywell ones connected to our dedicated alarm panel is an example, because we have dual-paths out to their central station and a local in-house path via Alarm Decoder.
On a side note, this is review #1 on Amazon for the Ring Smoke/CO listener:
Customer Review
1.0 out of 5 stars SKIP INSTALLING THE LISTENER
Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2019
We live in a rural area with a volunteer fire department. If the fire alarm goes off, the "listener" picks it up and trips the alarm, causing the monitoring company to automatically call the fire department and dispatch them. The volunteer fire department is not free. If they are dispatched it is an automatic $800.00, fire or not. It was about 10:00 p.m. inthe evening, we were home. The fire alarm beeped.....a warning that the battery needed replacing. The "listener" heard that, tripped the alarm, and instantly the monitoring company dispatched the fire department. In the meanwhile we frantically disarmed the system and called the monitoring company to cancel the alarm. The lady REFUSED to cancel the alarm! We BEGGED her, PLEADED with her, explaining repeatedly that the alarm was just a battery notification. She absolutely refused to cancel the alarm and HUNG UP ON US! What? HUNG UP? The fire department showed up. We apologized and sent them back home to their families. We paid the $800.00 bill when it came a week later. We threw the "listener" in the garbage. Now our system has no fire alarm except the generic ones on the walls that are useless unless we are home. I imagine the same thing would happen with alarms connected to the house electricity if the electric was interrupted. We notified Ring by email and phone message to tell them of the glitch in the "listener" and the stupidity and rudeness of the lady at the monitoring company. No one returned either communication. Way to go RING.
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I think that's a bit of an exaggeration and this reviewer has a bone to pick. First of all, per Ring policy Ring professional monitoring won't call the fire department before they call you. If they can't contact you then they call the fire department immediately afterwards. Second, they don't have email support. They have chat or telephone. So... the review is impossible from both of those standpoints. The situation they have portrayed literally cannot happen.
On top of that, the listener listens to what it can but there are probably no set chirp standards across devices of all manufacturers. If the fire alarms in the house beeped in a non-pseudo-standard way what is the listener supposed to do? Err on the side of caustion or burn the house down. My listener detects battery chirps and tests as what they are. It also detects alarms correctly.
You be the judge here. This is another perfect example of why Amazon reviews don't mean anything.
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This. 100 million times this. I loved my Nests, but they were bought out by Google, and they won't work with my new High efficiency system anyway.
The Nexia Platinum 850 from Trane/American Standard is locked to a closed ecosystem, even though its bog standard Zwave plus, and they deliberately left the useful portions of the Thermostat out of their Zwave support. Useless, perhaps even disruptive streaming piece of offal.
Meh.
What gets me really is the proliferation of WiFi devices labeled "no hub required". But use our cloud (processing hub) and your WiFi network...which is connected how? Oh a "router" which is really a switch (aka a hub, but smarter!).
Arrggghhhh!
Thanks for the rant thread @bcopeland!
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Anytime 
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Maybe, for once, the EU is ahead of the US in some of these areas 
Not sure if any of these are available in US frequency but might be worth checking out.
Heltun and MCO are nice looking (IMO) with decent functionality (Heltun is 700 series too). TKB are worth a look as well.
POPP is probably the best functionality (full numeric keypad) and suitable for both indoor and outdoor use. There's also a Zipato RFID mini-keypad which is OK for internal use.
POPP for "proper" smoke detectors (interlinked) .... they also do one where you can operate the siren independently.
I'm going to say Heltun again, 1-5 button touch panel switches, fully customisable (i.e. decouple inputs from outputs) and supports cetnral scene CC.
Personally I favour the iTach (Global Cache) devices for IR but they're WiFi / Ethernet. Pretty solid and reliable though.
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You're right, he didn't specify which country... 
Don't think POPP makes US frequency zwave devices. I've never found them anyway.
And the Heltun products aren't even for sale yet (at least not per their website)...
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Enerwave ZWN-SC7 was truly ahead of its time. I should do more work on that driver and do something to expose native scene support
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See... they don't make stuff like that anymore
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Zigbee Smoke detector. Needs a talented person to write a driver for Hubitat. I have 3 working through zigbee2mqtt but would want it to be direct.
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I blame Lutron for not widely licensing non-mesh Clear Connect. I'll just sit here waiting for Z-Wave 700 and Thread devices.
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Here’s another Zigbee smoke detector, made by SMC. They make a lot of smart home products for Xfinity.
https://na.smc.com/product/smoke-alarm-smcsm10-z/
They have a whole IoT section:
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Android phones (and I would guess Apple iPhones) do not take well to being plugged in continually. I was using the Alfred Camera app for a while. I had two phones where the batteries swelled. One phone I was able to rescue with a new battery. The other was damaged too badly. Those phones are now sitting idle and unplugged. I was able to get four 2nd gen Iris indoor/outdoor cameras and have those working instead. The only down side is no remote viewing without going through some hoops, including buying a new router that can serve as a VPN gateway for me to access the network remotely. I now am using Zoneminder to detect motion and record video. I figure that If I get alerted by Hubitat and have a good WiFi connection, I can use the VPN to be able to view live video. Otherwise, I can view the recordings later.
That being said, where is a camera that can be integrated into Hubitat and will provide for secure remote viewing without having to jump through hoops to do so and without making an open connection that can be hacked into for some stranger to view the camera?
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The SMC products were used by cable tv providers (comcast, time warner, etc) for their private label alarm systems and the devices do not appear to be currently available through retail channels and from the smartthings forums do not appear to be ZHA compliant.
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So here I am, an executive in a big company and want to expand my product line. Aha perhaps we can get in on this home automation stuff!
A little research later..... (although this step seems optional for many companies)
So boss, it seems there are two camps regarding Home Automation. WiFi (sometimes with servers and cloud services) and this Zigsomething system. The Zigsomething is a small unstable market mostly for geeks also we don't want to host any webservice as it represents an ongoing cost with no matching revenue. And we definitely don't want to get into selling webservice, leave that to Google.
So that leaves WiFi. We can sell a device and provide an app then let the customer do what they do best...play with their iPhone.
Sounds good, well present it to product development.
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