Smoke detector

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I would like to add a zwave enabled smoke detector to the network.
There are some smoke detectors with RF connection capability on 868MHz but none of them explicitly state that it supports zwave.
It seems though that these manufacturers would like to sell their own products instead of informing the public that these products are based on zwave.

Merten and Hager both offer RF networked smoke detectors and I would like to know if anybody ever tried to connect them to a Vera unit.
The one I’m interested in is the Hager TG511A.

Anybody having any experience connecting a smoke detector to their zwave network.

Brgds,
Eduard

2

The smoke detector in your link is not Z-wave compatible but works with KNX, a home automation system often used in offices and expensive homes (look at the price tag of that thing :slight_smile: ). There are various standards operating on that radio frequency but they are not interoperable.

There is a Z-wave compatible smoke detector: http://www.hashop.nl/Webwinkel-Product-12273677/Everspring-z-wave-rookmelder.html
I’ve several of these and they work reasonably well. They trigger Vera when smoke is detected, but unfortunately the reports on battery levels are unreliable. Which is too bad, as I find that a very useful feauture in battery powered devcies, especially in ones as important as smoke detectors.

3

Thank you for this valuable information.

Brgds,
Eduard

4

I would recommend the Vision smoke detector (z-wave enabled) as it wakes up each 30 minutes where as the Everspring does not. it also looks better too - the Eversping one is actually quite deep in size.

5

The Vision ones seem to be available from the same webshop as well :slight_smile: Do they provide accurate battery reports over Z-Wave?

6

Funny you should ask - I am working on battery reports as we speak. so the device wakes up every 30 minutes so I assume I could run a scene that polls for battery level each 2 minutes to catch the data when it does wake up and if then is below say 10% could send an alert of some sort. However I have not tested this yet (will be trying tonight hopefully)

I would assume that the battery level info is just a mistake by MCV as it should update this data each wakeup - I am yet to email MCV to ask them when they will update the driver to support this. with the battery reports this will be a great product I think - the everspribng not so due to the issues mentioned in my earlier post.

7

I believe Vera requests the battery level every 3 hours (i.e. whenever the device wakes up and it has been more than 3 hours since the last battery level update). You could change the wake-up time of the device accordingly, to save energy.

8

Okay interesting, will be good to see if batery reporting works well.

Sent from my HTC HD2 using Tapatalk 2

9

Anyone has a link on where I can purchase the Vision smoke detector here in the US?

I want to place it in the attic. A recent lightning storm caused fires to 3 homes in our area - all built within the last 10 years. One home burned down, the other two received minor damage. I believe all those fires started in the attic!

10

You can connect any of the standard 3-Wire Smoke/Carbon Monoxide sensors to Vera using a sm120x relay module connected to an Everspring door sensor.

Google sm120x.

In my house All of my Smoke detectors are wired together … if any trip they will all alert.
With this relay they also alert Vera. You may not be able to couple a new smoke detector to existing ones in your home f you can’t access the wiring for the existing smoke detectors.

Note: with a little more hacking you can also use Vera to trigger these smoke detectors.
Applying a 9 volt DC signal between the red and white wire will trip all of the connected smoke detectors. So you can have your very own whole house ALARM.