Today I set up a couple of smart smoke alarms at my place, they’re the new Sensereo MS-1. I had been waiting for literal years hoping a company would come out with a smart smoke alarm designed to fall back to being a “dumb” smoke alarm if needs be, and this unit looks to be exactly what I have been after. Inside are two seperate batteries, an integrated one for the smoke alarm that will last its entire usable lifespan (7 years), so it will still function as a warning device even if the other battery for the “smarts”, which lasts 2 years, runs out.

In Australia, as far as I’m aware, our smoke alarms have to be mains connected these days, so I’m running these in addition, not to replace the existing ones. Having these means if I’m away from home I will be better placed to know if there’s a smoke or a fire.

Set up was fairly simple, there is a typical QR code for pairing the unit via Matter, Home Assistant happily added it and within a minute or two it was all configured. After that, I physically mounted the units, all done. I’ll post an update if I run into any issues longer term, but my gut feel is these will be low effort and reliable, exactly what you want from this product category!

Currently listening: C’hantal - “The Realm (Love in D Minor Mix)"