Smart sensors without local alarm?

Hi everyone!

I’m looking into adding a few elements to what is only in a very limited way a smart home (a few HUE bulbs, mostly).

In particular I would be interested in smoke and water sensors. I have looked at a few options (Fibaro stands out, but I’m open to alternatives), but I would definitely like something that only send notifications (possibly to multiple phones), but does not ring any alarm locally.
I know this may be considered unsafe, but I still find it safer than having nothing at all and at least I would avoid a full-blown firemen intervention in case of false alarms, which seem to be ubiquitous, according to reviews.

Does anybody know of any company that allows to do that, either out of the box, or with a workaround? I live in Europe, if that makes a difference.

Thanks!

Look at the Aqara stuff. I have some flood sensors and smoke alarms from them and have been very pleased with them.

Possible hammer to crack a nut, but this could be done within Home Assistant.

Not sure it would work with Fibaro (but it appears Home Assistant does support Fibaro but would require the hub) but other sensors would work. You can find a list here that would work with it and I imagine you’d set up the system to not sound locally - assume it can be done, but I don’t have a smart smoke sensor.

However, reading the description for the Fibaro one, I’m not sure what your concern would be regarding the fire service? This doesn’t appear to link directly to the fire service and so they would only be called if someone called them. As a fire safety professional, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend having a fire alarm in place with sounders that wake you. Certainly in the UK, almost all fire deaths occur in the home (and Europe is very much behind the US in terms of residential sprinklers).

Hi Rosemary!

Thanks, I had read about those in the forum here. Glad to know they work well for you, but I do not think that the local alarm can be disabled, can it? Also, as far as I can see they do not have a smoke alarm, unless it escaped me.

Thanks for you reply.
I have recently renovated my apartment, so the likelihood of a mishap is limited. However, I’d like to know if something happens when I’m not home. That’s the time when I would disable the alarm and when the neighbours could call the emergency services. It may not be necessary for them to intervene if someone from the family is just around the block with a key. I’m afraid of them making more damage than they are trying to counter.

Thank you for the very extensive list of devices too, I will check those out ASAP.

What do you mean by local alarm? I can see two meanings:

  1. A loud siren or klaxon that goes off inside the dwelling.

  2. An alert that connects to the local fire department/emergency services center to summon help.

The first doesn’t seem to run afoul of your requirements, unless you’re in an apartment and think your neighbors will call emergency services if they hear your alarm go off.

Hi!

I mean number 1.
And yes apartment and yes afraid of neighbours calling emergency services. If I receive a notification and can’t be there within minutes I would rather call them myself.

I’ve seen this happen: firemen making greater damage than necessary for an emergency that wasn’t a serious one. Hence my attempt to prevent that happening to me.

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It depends on the setup you have. If you have one of the larger Aqara hubs it will make a siren like sound. But the E1 stick style hub does not do that. Just push notifications via HomeKit.

Aha. Will look into that then! Thank you so much!

Hi again! I can’t seem to find the smoke alarm. I do find it described as available in China, but not anywhere else. Did you buy one in Europe?

Also, if you have the E1: does it support 2 devices or more? Or do I need multiple E1 hubs if I want more devices? It’s all a bit unclear to me.

Thanks!

My parents have the E1 hub and it supports all of their sensors (4 temperature, a light sensor, and a motion sensor).

In my experience, while the Zigbee devices might not be listed for the Aqara server, they seem to pair anyway. My parents have a T1 light sensor that works just fine.

I paired all of my sensors to Zigbee2MQTT and share it back via Home Assistant, but I used to use the Aqara Hub and had no problems.

Thanks for that info!