I just added a First Alert ZCOMBO smoke/CO detector to my Ring alarm system (which is professionally monitored). Reading the tips in the app and the support site, it mentions that false smoke alarms can be cancelled by answering the call from the monitoring center or from the keypad but CO alarms CANNOT be cancelled.
If I press the physical Test button on the ZCOMBO (which you’re supposed to do weekly), will that trigger an alarm at the monitoring center? I don’t want the fire department to come thinking there’s a CO event. I’m hoping the “test” signal is different so Ring knows it’s a test and not an actual alarm event but can you please confirm this?
Hi @windracer. I’d recommend swapping to Self Monitoring before performing the test on your smoke & CO detector, and then swapping back to Professional Monitoring. This will completely remove any worries of a false alarm sending a signal to the monitoring center. To change to Self Monitoring, tap the menu in the top left of the Ring app > Settings > Monitoring. Then repeat those steps after the test to quickly swap back to Professional Monitoring, with all of your original settings in place.
Ok, I turned off professional monitoring and then tested the ZCOMBO. I see this in my alarm history in the Ring app:
Does that mean that Ring does know this was a test, so if I had professional monitoring still enabled during a test it wouldn’t trigger a visit from the fire department? I didn’t see the state of the smoke/CO alarms in the Ring app change during the test, so I’m hoping that’s the case.
Hi @windracer. I’m happy to chime in. Yes, the alert you are seeing means that the system knows it was just a test signal sent to the Alarm from the First Alert device. As a precaution, we usually recommend temporarily disabling Professional Monitoring when testing your First Alert device and Alarm because we do not want you to accidentally trigger a false alarm that sends a signal to the monitoring center.
