Whatever happened to IoT smoke alarms?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/04/whatever-happened-to-iot-smoke-alarms/

by edent • 5 years ago

19 71 5 years ago

lights0123• 5 years ago

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/04/when-to-rep...

The life expectancy of smoke alarms is generally 10 years, after which point their sensors can begin to lose sensitivity.

Every website says they should be replaced every 7-10 years anyways, regardless of their smart-ness.

toomuchtodo3• 5 years ago

They have a very small amount of radioactive material (~1.0 microcurie of the radioactive element americium-241) that is used as part of the detector, and it does what you’d expect it to do: it decays.

Consumer Reports can and should do better being a bit more verbose for correctness.

Crosseye_Jack• 5 years ago

A lot of them these days are photoelectric. They have a “light sealed” chamber (basically vented in such a way that ambient light doesn’t have a path into the chamber but “smoke” does (well smoke, dust and other airborne particulate that is carried in the air)). Instead in the chamber you have a light source and detector. Light is emitted from the source, reflects of the side of the detector and onto the detector. (Actually, thinking about it, I’m sure that they can also work “the other way round”, so instead of particulate blocking the light, lowering the detection levels, they can configured so the light source isn’t pointing at the detector and use the reflectivity of “smoke” to relect light onto the detector. But you get the idea. It’s been far too long since I’ve taken one apart, time to order another for fun. Anyways back to the post)

Dedicated ICs for this purpose can detect the slight lowering of light detected over time by the receiver as dust accumulates instead the chamber and adjust its trigger levels accordingly.

Removes the need for need for the scary radiation source warning label, removes the issue with the radiation source decaying over time and I’m sure comes with that lovely side effect of lowering the BOM cost.

Even though LEDs also decay, as it’s duty cycle is no where need 100% and is completely controlled by the IC I would expect the components in a photoelectric smoke detector to last much much longer than 10, but mine still came with (iirc) a 10 year expiry date on them. I would say because it’s a safety device, an abundance of caution is applied so other things ageing out have to be considered too (like the power supply caps)

Big Clive has taken these apart many a time. If this one doesn’t cover the operation of them, just search for smoke alarm on his channel and I’m sure it won’t take long before find one where he “tears down” the smoke detection chamber of an photoelectric version. https://youtu.be/uzKAZCKjpU8

No idea off the top of my head on how heat detectors (best near your kitchen so your toast doesn’t trigger them) work as personally I’ve never taken one of them apart (yet).

dustinmoris• 5 years ago

Could I build my own out of a Pi and some scavenged components? Sure – but I can’t be bothered

More importantly, no insurance company will cover costs from a fire if they find out that you had a self built smoke detector which didn't pass standard quality checks. I think in the UK landlords must do a yearly smoke detector check as part of home owner regulation so a self built device might have failed at that point as well.

Nextgrid2• 5 years ago

A workaround could be a completely separate device placed next to a standard, certified smoke alarm that just listens for the alarm. That'll cover the "remote alerts" part at least.

dementik• 5 years ago

That was my solution as well. I have required smoke detectors connected to powerline 1 per 60m2 or so and then have multiple Heiman zigbee detectors, connected to Home Assistant.

alkonaut5• 5 years ago

More importantly, no insurance company will cover costs from a fire if they find out that you had a self built smoke detector which didn't pass standard quality checks.

Is this a thing? Where?

Are there similar things for burglar alarms where your insurance doesn’t pay or has a more expensive premium because of lacking alarm systems?

Making a fire alarm smart should never affect the normal functionality. They should of course always be certified the same way. One thing that could be worse is battery time, especially for high power wireless like 802.11, but a workaround for that could be to have two separate batteries and let it fail to a dumb alarm when the IoT battery is dead.

yetihehe5• 5 years ago

Does it have to be wifi? My company makes GSM smoke detectors, no wifi required (and sim card with connection included in price).

https://ferguson-digital.eu/produkt/gsm-smoke-detector-fs2sd...

toomuchtodo3• 5 years ago

Will this work in the US with a US SIM card?

yetihehe5• 5 years ago

We didn't test it yet, but probably not. In UK (where the author of article resides) yes. Sim card is soldered in.

the_only_law• 5 years ago

I’ve read about all sorts of alarms (I don’t think smoke, but fire and other emergency alarms) running on things like ISDN before the term IoT ever existed

yetihehe5• 5 years ago

And I've worked on telemetry devices which had modem and could phone alarms and data to control room over landlines before there was any ISDN available. This was for city heating control. My company was upgrading this to mobile connectivity. Whole system earned it's worth after one pipe break, because operator could select area on map, turn off all flow to different devices with several clicks and they didn't have to use complicated freezing devices to fix pipe.

edent5• 5 years ago

That looks neat - any UK stockists? Looks to be about the same price as Nest once shipping is included.

yetihehe5• 5 years ago

No, currently only sent from poland.

brudgers14• 5 years ago

They were and are a really fucking dumb idea.

A smoke detector has exactly one function.

Make really irritating noise whenever something is wrong.

And exactly two definitions of wrong: smoke and low power.

The incorporation of convenience features entirely defeated the purpose of smoke detectors. It made them less likely to save lives.

There are still IOT smoke detectors in the commercial space for air ducts. And instead of noise, they signal a monitored central station in facilities in working relationships with the local fire service. Hospitals for example.

That's not your house.

The limited life expectancy of smoke detectors created an attractive recurring purchase model for Nest. It over-ruled life safety effectiveness. I suspect, but have no evidence beyond circumstantial, that lawyers, regulators, and insurers all said things that made financial accountants remodel projections.

nojokes2• 5 years ago

I like the second kind of wrong. My smoke sensors start to make random short bleeps. I have about 10 of them in our house. Usually it will take at least annoying 15 minutes to locate the culprit.

StavrosK• 5 years ago

Don't they have a LED to indicate low power? I don't know much about smoke detectors, but I'd imagine they'd have a LED on at all times to indicate that they're working.

seized2• 5 years ago

I disagree. My dumb detectors started false positives after just a few years. Their mute/silence buttons didn't work so burnt toast meant two minutes of screeching. No options for remote alerts (without external smart hardware). Batteries would only fail at night even after a few years. Or dust? Or carbon monoxide? Never knew, because the beeps were a terrible form of communication.

Smoke detectors SHOULD have some safe, reliable smart technology. All my Protects have outlasted the simple Kiddes.

brudgers14• 5 years ago

After a few years smoke alarms are supposed to be replaced. They have a lifespan based on radioactive decay of the detector.

Making them $200 a pop makes this less likely.

They are safe reliable technology. Convenience features make them less so.

Because we live in a world where some people can’t even operate a toaster.

kwyjobojoe• 5 years ago

If your smoke alarm is faulty you should replace it. Unlike most hardware, faulty smoke alarms can directly lead to the death of yourself or family. It's the one form of tech that I 100% replace when any problems occur.

There is no situation where you should accept or ignore a faulty smoke alarm.

heisenzombie• 5 years ago

I dunno, I don’t see a problem with progressive enhancement of a dumb device: Clearly, don’t control the screecher with a web-connected microcontroller. But if it’s a totally standard dumb fire alarm that also outputs a voltage to a microcontroller that sends an alert to your smart home platform of choice? I don’t see the downside. And if it has a 90% chance of alerting you that your fire alarm has gone off when you’re out of earshot of the irritating noise? Why not?

brudgers14• 5 years ago

The reason it’s a fucking dumb idea is in no small part because it doesn’t conform to our ordinary pattern recognition of really fucking dumb ideas.

The Nest could be disabled by waving at it...It was a feature.

There are smoke alarms you can connect to a central alarm panel. Alarm panels that can be monitored remotely. And monitoring services that will call you when there is an alarm.

The difference is each element prioritizes life safety by conforming to life safety standards.

An important dimension of these standards is saving the lives of firefighters. When everyone is out of the structure they don’t need to go into an actively burning building.

If you are out of earshot of a smoke alarm, what can you do besides turn it off?

Home IoT devices are not known for their security. Nor are they known for long term support. The article itself demonstrates that...

A smoke alarm is not a consumer is always right device. There’s nothing stopping an Alexa skill that responds to the noise of a smoke alarm with a text to your phone.

ricardobeat• 5 years ago

Why are they less likely to save lives - isn't the smoke detector and alarm part exactly the same as a non-IoT device?

grammarprofess• 5 years ago

Everything is a bad idea until you realize that it's still better than the precedent one

hellisothers• 5 years ago

Do you have examples of Nests failing more frequently than normal alarms? The connectivity is not useless and is one of the reasons I bought them, 12 of them for my house. If you live in even a medium sized house you have a lot of rooms such that having ALL the alarms go of telling you the specific room the smoke is in can make a huge difference.

Not to mention that these alarms do both types of smoke/fire and carbon monoxide all in one.

brudgers14• 5 years ago

When a smoke alarm goes off, it’s telling you to get out of the house. The Nest design encourages opening an app on your iPhone instead. A smartphone has many uses but it is not a practical fire extinguisher.

Each of its convenience features for non-critical events is potentially a deadly distraction when life is a matter of seconds. It’s the smoke that usually kills.

alkonaut5• 5 years ago

They were and are a really fucking dumb idea.

I disagree

A smoke detector has exactly one function. Make really irritating noise whenever something is wrong.

No that’s one of two functions. The other one is letting me know if there is something burning even when I’m not home. It’s not nearly as important as the first job and a device should never do the first job worse because of it. But it can come in handy.

A good connected fire alarm can do all kinds of things like closing all windows or work as a siren for a home alarm.

In no situation should they ever be dependent on a cloud service, not even for “additional” features beyond the beep-when-there-is-fire function.

brudgers14• 5 years ago

Your disagreement is “the consumer is always right.”

That you disagree by this rationale is why it is a dumb idea.

sagolikasoppor• 5 years ago

I have a large house so I have IoT smoke detectors because they are connected so if one goes off, everyone does.

Its good because otherwise a fire could start in one section of the house without me waking up for example.

yftsui• 5 years ago

Zigbee smoke alarms cost is okay, but still a few bucks more and it add up if you have 10 of them.

I just enable Alexa to listen for smoke alarms and send me a notification when I am away.

edent5• 5 years ago

Do you know of any Zigbee alarms for sale in the UK? I couldn't find any when I looked.

seized2• 5 years ago

Nest Protects are still around and are amazing. So much better than the garbage Kiddes I had before (a working mute/silence button? What a concept!). The self tests and green Ok light at night are comfort boosters. And the voice announcement of the alarm level and location are great features.

LatteLazy• 5 years ago

This is what I came here to post. So easy, so much function, even with rechargeable batteries.

sixothree2• 5 years ago

Do they come with other sensors other than smoke? I have a hard time believing google would not take the opportunity to monitor my movements.

WolfRazu• 5 years ago

They have a motion sensor you can use for triggering the light and activating cameras etc.

Nextgrid2• 5 years ago

There is a microphone: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9250972?hl=en

edent5• 5 years ago

They also have Carbon Monoxide sensors.

xyyzy• 5 years ago

The battery life of the Nest Protect is also incredible! I have them for 3 years already without changing the batteries.

tssva2• 5 years ago

Many much less expensive non-IoT smoke alarms now voice announce the alarm type and location.

acidburnNSA• 5 years ago

I got a zwave product that you mount next to your normal smoke detector. It listens for the alarm. When it hears it, it sends a zwave notification. Works great!

I also have laser particulate sensors hooked to esp8266s for dramatically higher resolution smoke/air quality detection. They go over Mqtt to home assistant for graphing, automations, etc.

aequitas• 5 years ago

433MHz coupled wireless smoke detectors are about as cheap as ones without. And their signal can be intercepted by a cheap Rflink device: http://www.rflink.nl/blog2/devlist

Granted they are not as fancy as a Nest, but you can buy 5 of these for the price of 1 Nest. And the Nest's aren't flawless either. I've had to reconnect 2 of the 3 Nest's at my parent house multiple times now and also a Google account is now required.

hondadriver• 5 years ago

https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-smoke-smart-home-automa...

Soon...

tssva2• 5 years ago

The only thing I would be looking for out of a smart smoke detector is remote notification and I already achieve this using my Wyze cameras. They are set to listen for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. They will notify me if detected. The notification also triggers other actions such as all the lights in the house being turned on.

Johnwbh• 5 years ago

Given how many stories there are of IOT devices being hijacked for bitcoin mining or hacked in other ways I am extremely grateful that my smoke alarms are dumb as bricks.

FounderBurr• 5 years ago

Just have something In the room listen for the horrific screeching of a fire alarm. Then have it send you an sms or whatever. No need to cal it a “fire” anything and no regulatory hurdles to overcome.

bokohut• 5 years ago

As technology propagates into everything one would be wise to comprehend the management of such devices that are connected regardless of the function. Significant home automation adoption is coming and some have decades of experience in building those changes. Where there is smoke usually fire leads.

Whatever happened to IoT smoke alarms?

Related Stories