a longer term review of the Kidde ZWave smoke alarms...

[Mike Andrews]

Heh.

I just bought 3 of the First Alert Z-Wave Smoke) CO alarms on sale at
Amazon.

So far they work fine

You have to do a hack to get the Vera to add them: Do the add procedure
twice.  Put in the battery tray while holding down the button. A short
beep. Add the device on Vera - it has a selection for the First Alert
"Zcombo." After the second beep pull the battery tray and do the
insertion/button thing again.  The Vera will see it.

I was able to set up Vera notifications over email and text message, but I
want these to do an Announcement on my Echos.

I found a skill that does Alexa notifications through the cloud "mynotify"
but that just dors the same as what you get for Amazon delivies where you
have to "Alexa what are my notifications?"

I found a silly way to do it: "Say: Alexa make an announcement....(Wait 3)
...Smoke detected upstairs.". That worked mostly and I could dedicate an
Echo input to the XT server Mac to hear it

I'm still looking for a way to do it with an API (hint, James) and BTW
James, it seems that the HASS.IO Home Assistant python app works on Mac and
can do it and a ton of other things. I have not as yet worked much on
hacking that.

As I mentioned I'm currently also obsessed with addressable LED Lightstrip
displays now likely using a NodeMCU.

--Mike

On Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 8:41 AM James Sentman <james at sentman.com> wrote:

> Short answer is that I’m not happy with them at the moment. I installed 5
> of them a few months ago and paired them to the Vera. Though they are
> communicating with the Vera the Vera doesn’t think that they are fully
> “configured” and so always displays those error messages for them. I tested
> them after initial install and they did work. They are reporting battery
> level and they did respond to a burning piece of paper blown out underneath
> them. However one of them gave me a false smoke alarm a few weeks after I
> put it up and no amount of fiddling with it would get the Vera to think it
> wasn’t sending a smoke alarm even though the alarm itself is not going off.
>
> I’ve just gotten home from a few days out of town and while we were away a
> second one decided that it should report smoke detection even though there
> wasn’t any. That was a bit alarming since we were not at home when it went
> off. I can see through an indoor camera that everything is fine and there
> had been no temperature excursions or anything else that would indicate a
> problem. Plus no other alarms were reading and the main line of built in
> wired together smoke detectors that I left in the house did not ever go
> off. (I installed a relay device on the end of that interconnect line and
> have a contact closure sensor on that as well) But seriously what good is a
> smoke alarm that sticks to the on position in the computer when there is no
> smoke? I have checked in the Vera and it thinks the devices are reporting
> an alarm, it’s not just XTension.
>
> When I get a chance this week I’m going to take them down and to an
> unpair/repair and let them sit on top of the vera for some amount of time
> until I try to do the second one. Perhaps I just added them too quickly or
> something. I’ll also contact Vera support about them in the next few days
> and ask if they have any beta updates or anything they can suggest to me.
> If any of that results in a more stable system I’ll post again about them,
> but for the moment they are not on my list of reliable devices.
>
> As I mentioned I’ve been out of town but am back now. Non-list email that
> people sent me over the last week will start to get dealt with this evening
> and tomorrow. Sorry about the delay, it’s been a busy time around here the
> last few months and I’ve not had as much time to devote to you all as I
> normally would. Pretty much every project has been on hold. I’m looking
> forward to being busy on the things I enjoy doing!
>
> Thanks,
>  James
>
>
> James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org
>       http://MacHomeAutomation.com
>
>
>
>
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>
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