(Video) How to cheaply monitor your Smoke/CO alarm with Arduino and MySensors

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
#1

Hey Everyone,

I posted this over on the MySensors site but thought I’d post it here too. In case you haven’t heard of MySensors it’s an awesome plugin for Vera where you can build you own cheap custom sensors. In this case I integrated my Kidde Smoke/CO alarm into Vera for around $7 (not including the parts to make the MySensors gateway). Now I can send myself email alerts and trigger actions if my alarm goes off. If you’re interested in building one yourself here is the link to the video: How To - Smoke Alarm Monitoring with Arduino and MySensors - YouTube

On a side note, I’d be curious to hear how people are automating based off of status from their smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. I was thinking turn off the HVAC if an alarm is triggered but haven’t thought of too much more than that. Maybe turn on lights that would assist in exiting the house? If you have other ideas I’d love to hear them.

Pete

#2

Hey Pete,

I created a serial gateway for my Vera 3 and connected it. I can see the sub connection what do I do next? When I try to start to include a dumb device is gives me a system error device not ready? I deleted all the arduino software and retired the gateway but still the same problem. Any idea?

#3

Great, glad to hear you got it running (mostly). I haven’t heard of the problem you are describing. Have you taken a look at some of my other videos (the getting started ones)? They may help you get everything configured. If not, check out the forum at mysensors.org. There are lots of helpful posts over there. Sorry I can’t be more specific.