Connected/z-wave Smoke Alarm at Home

[d.kiran]

Hi,

I know there are no connected z-wave alarms right now on the market and I have about 8 of them in my house that I will have to replace, so I was thinking of an alternate solution. This is what I am planning to do.

1. Get one of the these z-wave relay switch and connect it to my alarm's relay switch (mine is a kidde, so the relay is here .

2. The relay when triggered will turn on the switch, which in turn can be used in a rule to do whatever is required.

Is there any reason why this would not work ? If this can work, which relay works best with Almond? the enerwave, the monoprice or the aeontec ?

[fillibar]

Not sure what you mean by connected. One goes off they all go off feature?

If you are just looking for a Z-Wave smoke detector there are the First Alert ones at Lowe's that "work with Iris" and are using Z-Wave. But if you want them all to go off, no, they do not do that.

[chad.siegmann]

I'm guessing you're referring to the fact that they aren't interconnect or hardwired to the mains power of the house. Right now I can only find the battery operated ones as well but have been really happy with them.

[d.kiran]

I am not worried about being connected to the main power, but I want all my alarms to go off when one of them gets triggered.

With the traditional hardwired alarm systems, there is an alarm interconnect wire (red wire) that will make sure that all the smoke alarms get triggered even if one of them is turned on. With the first alert, that does not happen. I am looking for ways to make sure I am notified in case a smoke alarm goes off.

With my example below, I will not have any  smoke alarm devices in my Almond. I will have a z-wave relay, which looks like a light switch that will turn on and off based on the alarm status. Since this is hardwired, any of the alarms tripping anywhere will turn the light switch on.

[fillibar]

It strikes me as odd that none of them do the interconnect for alarm state (even Nest Protect does not). I am not sure why that is the case... How tough would it be to trigger? Would it be possible to use a relay to trigger the interconnect wire? Does anyone know?

As for hardwired power... Neither First Alert is (which also strikes me as odd). I hardwired all mine and they all have battery backup. It just makes sense I think. Plus then Z-Wave versions could act as repeaters AND get more sensors integrated. That is what aggravates me about the Nest Protect... It has a bunch of sensors I would love to integrate and use the data from... But cannot. Unclear if I ever WILL be able to either.

[MrBishop]

My understanding is most wired alarms send out a small pulse along one line; so couldn't hooking up a simple mains to zwave receiver nd setting an alarm do the trick? I mean I know it's not perfect, but that way you can keep the hardwired units and get zwave notification. I can't for the life of me remember what they are called but I feel like i've seen some around. Although I really wish  real wired zwave option existed to, we just got new wired alarms put it and can't use them either, I have considered replacing them, or simply finding a zwave receiver module. I also don't se why there aren't more of them with more sensors packed it.

[d.kiran]

It strikes me as odd that none of them do the interconnect for alarm state (even Nest Protect does not). I am not sure why that is the case... How tough would it be to trigger? Would it be possible to use a relay to trigger the interconnect wire? Does anyone know?

Are you asking if Nest can trigger the alarm wire? That should be possible. It's essentially the reverse of what I am trying to do. What I want to do, is when there is a signal on the interconnect wire, the relay turns on. In your case, you would manually trigger the relay. That way, it would seem to the alarm connected to the relay that some other smoke alarm triggered the interconnect. Basically, if another smoke alarm can trigger the interconnect, any other switch should be able to right?

[fillibar]

Not asking if Nest Protect can... They cannot. I own one. They do not even have a wire to do it in the future. I was more curious if anyone knew WHY none of these smoke detectors do it... If it is so simple and cheap (a single relay and control of it is so basic) why are none of the companies doing it?

My guess is some sort regulatory and liability reasons.

[d.kiran]

You are right, it seems to be a regulatory issue.  I think this does a good job of explaining https://nest.com/support/article/Why-doesn-t-Nest-Protect-have-wired-interconnect

If alarms from different companies are connected together, they may not warn you properly in an emergency. The NFPA actually prohibits the connection of alarms from different manufacturers without special testing. To the best of our knowledge, no company sells a combination smoke and CO alarm that is meant to be connected with a different company’s smoke and CO alarm. Some companies even state in their documentation not to connect to a different company’s smoke and CO alarm.

I still think you should be able to roll your own solution if Nest Protect can connect with other devices. <Rant> I hate all these smart devices that don't talk to each other. Everyone wants to build something proprietary in the hope that we will buy all their future devices and they will all work automagically (i.e. apple business model). </Rant>

[fillibar]

Especially something as simple as the interconnect. What, nobody could make a regulation that 5v DC, 12v DC, 120VAC or 220VAC (something) on the line would trigger it? That is just dumb.

At the same time Nest is being dumb also... Why not allow theirs anyways? What if I wanted all of mine replaced by Nest Protects? I have to hope they all talk over the wireless or such on an emergency? Ugh.