First Alert CO/Fire Detector - Armed / Disarmed? How to test

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
1

I recently purchased the First Alert CO/Fire Detector x 2. I paired it sucessfully, it added two devices “Smoke & CO Senor” and “CO Sensor” Assuming one is smoke and other is CO.

My Question:

Does it need to be in the “ARMED” state to be activated/work or it doesn’t matter?

I ultimately am going to create a scene, I can just select whenever “CO Sensor detects CO, wheter is armed or disarmed”, I just wanted to know if it matters, and what that actually does.

I’m also curious if there would be a way that if the Co/Fire is in alert, can it activate/alarm my Vista20p Panel w/ EVL4 to ultimately send alert to central station.

THANKS!

2

Hi there,

Arm/Disarm is a “soft” function that gives you more flexibility in scenes with Vera. For example, you can set arm and disarm intervals, during which the sensor should notify you, or ignore if it’s during disarm time frame. Being a software capability of the Vera unit, will not have any physical control of the actual device.(eg, will not stop/silent the siren for example.) And to finally answer your question - the sensor does not have to be ARMED from the interface in order to function correctly.

The "whenever “CO Sensor detects CO, wheter is armed or disarmed” will ignore any house modes status for example, and give you a notification, no matter the status of the arming state.

Your Vista20p could be trigger through scenes but I’m not sure if the plugin for this alarm panel offers this kind of trigger. Better to be asked in the Alarm panel thread or maybe someone who knows will give you some more insight on this.