Does the Fibaro smoke alarms actually work?

[MWDK 1]

I have one in each room of the house.. One of them is very near our fireplace - and often when i open it (when there is fire) some smoke escapes .. I have also tried to keep the door open to it, so the whole house smelled of smoke - but nothing at all came from the Fibaro smoke alarms.. Much more smoke than i would allow usually before it alarming me.

They are connected to my HC2 like everything else..

Anyone else having doubts about them working ?

Im thinking about doing a test with them all and put them right above where the smoke will be the most dense.

[ziutus 0]

I have similar problem

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Is possible to test it by smoking cigarette?

[robmac 173]

You will get Dean going on the subject.

I have one that I keep testing on new versions of hc2 to see if it works. Nothing yet

[dawiinci 5]

You should see the amount of smoke in HC2 V4.

Don't use cigarettes to test it. You might damage it.

[D-Vine 65]

smoke detectors have to be testet with official test gas (like aerosol, ref 8 test gas) or with official test wood, you have more materials. Then is the situation about placing a smoke detector.

Also the can be situations where smoke is there but smoke detector won't go off

for example:

trash can fire in how you call it, nursery room for old people. Where it's warm all the time,

smoke go's up but because of the heat in room there is a thermal blanked on the sealing. Smoke stay's under the thermal blanked and never get's to smoke detector.

People will say smoke detector broken, but not true in these situation. And there many other's

Won't say this was your situation, but it could be.

My former job was in the fire detection, with smoke detectors etc.

It can be a complex thing about testing, and simple

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/emoticons/default_icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" /> So much situations.

With old version could see much, the did go off. Only with setting on 3 I had my doubt about the speed.

Now got new version, can do better testing, will do that soon.

Keep in mind, that not always en direct when people see smoke, the smoke detector had to go off.

[A.Socha 133]

you can test smoke by pressing 5s B button - smoke will do selftest

[Alex 32]

Once I have tested one smoke sensor with test gas (I borrowed the one that we use at the firm).

And it worked (at least with 3.590).

Other problem I had in the last couple of months have been two times a false alarm. After increasing the level from 2 to 3 it did not occure anymore. But I have no idea why there was such a false alarm. The room where it occured was completely empty.

[dawiinci 5]

Sounds more like a ZWAVE issue to me. Like those false motion triggers.

[MWDK 1]

Sorry for asking - but isnt it normal for a smoke detector to go off - if there is smoke in the room? Not cigarette smoke, but smoke coming from burned Wood?

Should it matter if the smoke detector is zwave enabled or not?

I just find it very odd that none of my smoke alarms from Fibaro have said anything, even though i left the door open in my fireplace and the Whole house smelled like smoke..

[fergalmccarthy 5]

Sorry for asking - but isnt it normal for a smoke detector to go off - if there is smoke in the room? Not cigarette smoke, but smoke coming from burned Wood?

Should it matter if the smoke detector is zwave enabled or not?

I just find it very odd that none of my smoke alarms from Fibaro have said anything, even though i left the door open in my fireplace and the Whole house smelled like smoke..

That would be my expectation as well. It should not need to be connected to a Zwave controller or the sensitivity set, it is and should act like a normal smoke alarm

[goran 9]

This is why the black box data would be useful.

I would have thought that you could use this data to see if the smoke sensor was getting close to triggering an alarm, so you could verify that it is working and to help adjusting the sensitivity level.

But this is obviously not the case (

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).

[MWDK 1]

This is why the black box data would be useful.

I would have thought that you could use this data to see if the smoke sensor was getting close to triggering an alarm, so you could verify that it is working and to help adjusting the sensitivity level.

But this is obviously not the case (

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).

Pardon my french, but isnt it exactly this it shows in Fibaro´s promo video of the smoke alarm?

Its not a smoke alarm if it doesnt react on smoke alone, right?

[glennsp 0]

I can confirm that (at least for me) the smoke alarms works as expected.

A smoke alarm won't go off with cigarette smoke or the smell of smoke. It will go off if there's a lot of smoke or heat (and probably gases and other things I don't know about). This goes for all smoke sensors, not just Fibaro.

I actually made a involuntary fire drill yesterday while cooking. I have placed one of the smoke sensors too close to the stove it seems. I have also a scene connecting 4 smoke sensors to 2 sirens, so it made a lot of noise.. (I'm on version 4.031).

I still have equipment that doesn't work yet on 4.031 (TKB, Qees and Aeon switches) but it's good to know that the most important equipment works as it should.

By the way, if you want to test your smoke detector, put some wood chips in a cup, light them up, let them burn for a few seconds and cover the smoke sensor with the cup. Should generate enough smoke to set them off. I've tried all mine on several HC2 version.

[sjek13 0]

when i installed the smoke detectors, in the living room where i smoke cigarettes it was triggered constantly. i decreased the sensitivity and now its fine.

[j.nowacki 5]

MWDK, it is hard to determine if device should go off with such amount of smoke. Sell of it does not really states anything - after putting down the candle you can smell it in whole room, but you don't expect a smoke sensor in the other corner to react. The only reliable way to test them without real fire is to use some special testers.

[dcspock 17]

I have had 3 false alarms over the last 5 nights with 3 seperate smoke sensors in two different levels of the house!!

And the best part - only in the middle of the night!

 

Funny though, one just beeped like 10 times and then went silent, so I did not even had the time to get to it and know which one on the level beeded (we sleep upstairs, on the ground floor are 3 smoke sensors installed). Tonight now the on in the basement went rouge (kept beeping so at least I knew where to go).

 

As I am on 4.x I can at least check the blackbox.

 

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Has anybody an explanation, why the smoke sensor went off at 0:40 absed on the picture??

 

The explanation of the Shade2 paramaeter does not hold here (see

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That was the last time the problem although also in the middle of the night and nothing had really happened:

 

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All smoke sensors are next gen and roughly 2 months old - so I hardly believe the chamber is alredy dirty...

[j.nowacki 5]

To be honest it hardly looks like coincidence - few sensors in short period of time. Have you manually decreased its sensitivity?

[dcspock 17]

No, standard values, nothing changed...

[j.nowacki 5]

May it be the environment is somehow polluted? Dust, high humidity?

[dcspock 17]

Not at all, its my living room.

 

And espc. the orrcurence over night time is irritating, as there is no movement or anything going on...

 

Might an increase/descrease in temperature cause an alarm? What would happen if I disable the 3rd device "heatDetecto"?