So I currently have 4 of these First alert Combo alarms. I guess when i first installed them I never got them fully working. i can see them on my axial software, but I realize after my smoke alarm went off due to cooking that they do not report to axial. I will be adding a few more soon and i wondered what the proper protocol is to get these added and working?
Also, should they show up as alarms? Binary sensors?
Any help getting these fully working would be helpful! thanks
The trick is getting them configured before they go back to sleep. I couldn't find a way to wake it up after the initial inclusion, so I found that I had to use Axial Server to include, then immediately try to run an auto configure.
When you've done it right, you'll see the alarm code change to 13 (if I recall correctly) when you do a test by pusing the button on the alarm itself.
I've got mine set to "alarm" but it doesn't really matter too much on this device.
Thanks Ryan, I'll try that and see how it goes.
Ok so I tried it out. Added the alarm and did a quick auto configuration. When I pushed the test button I got a alarm code 13. But now the code 13 will not turn off. Any ideas on how to turn the code off without removing and adding again?
There's a code that will always be there... for some reason, the alarm sends it out to signify "all ok." If I recall, it'll change to 1 or 2 when an actual fire is detected, so you can basically set your scene trigger to watch for anything other than 13.
Sorry to pull up an older post... but i'm STILL having issues with these and before I buy more, i want to get this fixed. I changed all the batteries, excluded them and started from scratch... Followed the instructions... Include (network wide) on Incontrol, Closed battery door while holding the button, device added, auto configure... success! Reneame and DONE! All were added with no alarm. I decided to test one of them... pushed int he test button, Axial recieved a Alarm code 13. seems to be working perfectly... so I removed the alarmed one and added it again. About and hour after adding all of these I keep getting alarm code 13s from all of them, when I take Axial offline, they reset to no alarm, but sure enough, the alarm code 3 keeps coming back. I do not get any actual alarms from any of the devices... Any ideas whats going on?
The device will always send a code to signify that "all is good." As far as I know, there's not a way to disable this -- at least with mine, I haven't been able to turn it off. What you do instead is setup your scenes to watch for something other than that default alarm code, then trigger your scenes when something else shows up.
If thats the case, Does anyone happen to know what alarm code will actually display when a real CO or fire event happends... I believe a code 12 is the the test, code 13 is the "all good" If We can find out the proper codes, we can set these up as multi level sensors and do different things for different codes.
I took one of my smoke/CO alarms outside next to my smoker while cooking and found that the smoke alarm sends a "1" level for a fire event. No clue what the CO level would be, and I don't know any safe way to test it. From what I've been reading in other forms it may also send a "1". Anyone know for sure?
Jonny couldn't you take the CO detector and place it by a car exhaust pipe on bucket? Or maybe next to a lawn mower exhaust covering it briefly with a tent like a blanket or something?
My guess they are simply just like other zwave sensors, 0 closed, 1 open.
I have added the device. see the following link for .png file with how it looks. Device config Is this set up correctly?
Now how do I trigger an event, such as an email? Do I create a scene with a device trigger and "Trigger when device is... at a specific level" set to 1? How would I create a scene like rscott described, where something happens when it's not 13?
-Stew
You are correct, you create a scene, with a device trigger with the value you are interested in. If you want to trigger on anything other than 13, you could add a trigger that reads "Trigger when device is changing to any level" and a condition that reads "Alarm level is != 13"
I have mine set up as a multilevel sensor. These alarms have multiple levels based on the alarms. As Ryan has said, Level 13 is the "all good", level 12 is when you do weekly test. Level 1 means fire and level 2 is CO.
Thanks for your help. Great software.
