Smoke Detectors With Light Sensors
Posted by TronKing21@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 40 comments
Smoke detectors chirp when their batteries are low. 99% of the time this happens in the middle of the night and wakes you up. Add a light sensor so it only chirps for low battery when the sun is up or lights are on. With a setting to toggle or disable.
say592@reddit
There are newer ones that have a 10 year battery. You literally dont replace the battery, it is good until the sensor expires, then you throw the entire thing out. I can deal with it chirping once every 9-10 years.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
Agreed. Does it chirp when the sensor goes out? Curious. But… at that 9 or 10 year mark, if you had your choice…would it chirp in the middle of the night, or at a more opportune time?
say592@reddit
It did chirp when the sensor went out! It was a different kind of chirp than the battery going out though, it was like "chirp chirp" then waited a minute or whatever the time is, then "chirp chirp".
As far as the every 10 year one, fires can happen at any time. Im fine with it doing it in the middle of the night if its once every \~10 years. Im in my mid 30s, that would mean I would have gotten woken up by a fire alarm dying like four times in my life? That seems reasonable.
WhenTheDevilCome@reddit
Yeah, I don't think that's how the "Your fire detection equipment might not function in an emergency" indicator is supposed to work, nor should be designed to work. You don't need to expediently detect fire "only when the sun comes up". (Nor is everyone's sleep schedule "at night.") Nor should the indication for lack of a battery backup be "disabled", since "fire" and "power disruption" often go hand-in-hand.
The whole premise seems to imply a perspective of "when this happens, it isn't important, and if it could be disabled, I would just disable it so that it never bothered me again." For many other folks it's a situation of "Holy crap, I forgot to change the battery this year, and it ran down all the way to the point of beeping about it."
174wrestler@reddit
The UL standard requires the chirp start when there's 30 days of power left. Nothing prevents you having a pre-alert in advance of this level, and smart smoke detectors do, such as by sending you an app message or having a LED change color. If you miss or ignore the pre-alert, you still get the normal alert, so there's no degradation of safety.
say592@reddit
I use one that is Zwave compatible and I usually get a battery alert the day before it starts chirping. Well, I should say I used one like that. It got to the end of its life (where the sensor expires) so I just replaced it. New one is also Zwave to integrate with my alarm, but it has a 10 year battery.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
Thank you, fine Redditor. I seem to have hit a nerve with many commenters and I feel like they’ve misread what I wrote. You seem very logical!
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
I never said disable the feature of chirping. I said disable the feature to override nighttime chirping. Never once have I heard the chirp and thought that the detector no longer worked at all. The chirp begins (powered by the battery) before the battery is dead, so another 8 hours is not going to be detrimental to the purpose of the detector. My mention of disabling this NEW feature was to allow for those who speed during the day or don’t want to use it at all. The chirp would remain. It must.
OkRickySpinach@reddit
Someone should make a smoke detector that can determine the difference between cooking and an actual fire. Or even one with a button so you can turn it off for 30 minutes.
Agitated_End_2611@reddit
The problem is they can't, they make them sensitive to detect smoldering fires. The closest I have ever seen was the nest/Google smoke detector that would give you a heads up that it sees a little smoke so you could silence it before it went into full alarm mode
thirdeyefish@reddit
When nest first came out, they were a lot better.
LavishnessCapital380@reddit
The only thing I saw about them when they first came out was constant issues and whole house false alarms that would not silence.
I remember one video where someone had to take them all down and stuck them in a cooler in the garage so he could not hear them anymore.
If they are worse now...........
thirdeyefish@reddit
Version 1 had a motion sensor that would silence the alarm if you waved your arms in front of it. That was deemed too hazardous. Version 2, the one I had, would give you a verbal 'smoke is detected in the kitchen and allow you to silence it and get some heavier ventilation going prior to the full alarm. The full alarm would sound in every room, calling the name of the room where the alarm occurred. So if you were upstairs you knew if there was smoke in the kitchen or CO2 in the garage.
LavishnessCapital380@reddit
They make standard cheap ass smoke detectors that have a silence button.
174wrestler@reddit
UL introduced a cooking smoke rejection requirement in 2024. Look for detectors that meet UL 217 8th edition at minimum. 9th edition adds a couch fire immediately after the cooking smoke.
One thing this led to is that smoke detectors had to switch to the more expensive photoelectric sensors from the ionization type.
Rude_Mud9538@reddit
Or just change your batteries regularly. Pregnancy doesn't pay
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
Eh. Easier said than done. Theirs a reason that many devices have a battery indicator and cars have maintenance lights. I’d suggest a battery indicator on smoke detectors but with their placement often out of typical eye-level viewing, that would get missed too.
therealcmj@reddit
They’re generally good for over a year. But I do mine every time the clock changes.
It’s a negligible amount of money to protect against death.
Killerkendolls@reddit
Ten year sealed batteries. Set a recurring Amazon order every 9 years and be done with it.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
True. But of the billions of families that have them, not everyone is going to consistently do this. The chirp feature is already there for a reason, I’m merely suggesting it hold off for a more opportune time. I wrote this after my 79 year old mother called me 3 hours after she fell trying to change hers. She called later so she wouldn’t wake me up. If the chirping had waited until daylight she would have just called me to change it for her.
therealcmj@reddit
So for the 1,000s of people that don’t you’re advocating adding cost and complexity to the millions that do. And you still have to deal with weird cases like it’s installed in the basement where the lights are usually off.
Newer ones are moving to 10 year batteries. That’s a better solution all around.
Rude_Mud9538@reddit
I'm not reading all that bro, you're pregnant
DiaperedOpossum@reddit
It’s okay. You can just say you’re illiterate.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
I respectfully disagree in some respects. 10 year batteries are great. It means even more “out of site and out of mind”. I myself have them hooked to electric where the battery is truly just a backup for when the power goes out. But I would pay extra for one that is smarter and could prevent itself from waking me up in the middle of the night, so it is also a product differentiator and a marketing tactic. The basement issue was addressed in my original description where it could be toggled or disabled. And…complexity was already added for those who you think are a minority and I’d argue are the majority…it chirps already because enough people need it to. My suggestion is to make that feature less annoying.
Rude_Mud9538@reddit
I told you not to argue with me. Now you're pregnant Boy. You ain't coming back from that...
Photon6626@reddit
People would quickly figure out to just cover it with electrical tape and they'd end up with smoke detectors that don't work.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
I mean… if it chirps at a preferable time of day, then much less reason to try to cover it. If that their intent, then they can just take the batteries out…which some people do already. Not smart, but you can lead a horse to water…
Photon6626@reddit
The purpose is to annoy you. You want it to chirp when you don't want it to to give you the motivation to change the battery. If it's chirping during the day and you aren't bothered you won't change the battery. If you give people a way to stop the chirping without changing the battery, people will do that and some of them will die.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
I don’t follow the logic here. My car maintenance lights only ever go off at a time when I’m using the vehicle, and I don’t ignore them. Some people do, sure, but I don’t ignore maintenance (especially annoying chirping) just because it didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night.
Photon6626@reddit
Not everyone is like you
Timmah_Timmah@reddit
You can't put the cover back on with the batteries removed.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
So they’d put tape over a sensor but not leave a cover partially detached? Six of one, half a dozen of another.
Timmah_Timmah@reddit
We agree. The OPs idea has merit.
Timmah_Timmah@reddit
You can cover the battery connections with tape and it won't chirp..
Photon6626@reddit
Ok
mpking828@reddit
My kidde alarms (20SAR-W) have this feature. from the manual
~Automatic silencing of Low Battery and End of Unit Life chirps at night (use the app to enable this feature)~
My previous alarm had a light sensor, and used it to figure out the day night cycle, and would turn the LED Status light off based on this cycle. However i had to replace all those units because they failed.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
Awesome!
Ukuleleah@reddit
It's supposed to be annoying. It'd be useless if it was ignorable.
TronKing21@reddit (OP)
I’d think that chirping during the day or when the lights are on is still annoying. Being woken up at 2am is infuriating, not just annoying. But in my case my 79 year old mom fell trying to replace hers at 4:30 in the morning because she didn’t want to wake me up. She waited until 7:30 to call me and tell me she fell. If it had gone off during the day she’d have called me to replace the batteries and not tried to do it herself.
FredOfMBOX@reddit
Buy the ones with 10 year batteries.