There is no push or email notification when the First Alert Z-Wave Smoke/CO Alarm has a low battery. Instead, the alarm just starts chirping like a conventional non-smart alarm.
Ring should add a notification when the battery level reaches a low level, giving time to respond and change the batteries before the chirping begins.
I suspect the alarms themselves don’t send the low battery alert to Ring until they start chirping, but that said I’d still not mind seeing a notification on the app when they run low.
@nkull wrote:
“I suspect the alarms themselves don’t send the low battery alert to Ring until they start chirping, but that said I’d still not mind seeing a notification on the app when they run low.”
That doesn’t matter: If you lookon the Ring app it correctly shows the battery level for the smoke alarms. Therefore Ring could add a push/email notification of low battery at a level BEFORE the alarm reports low battery/starts chirping. It wouldn’t require any change in how the smoke alarm works or when it sends alerts to Ring.
Ring would do well to emulate the functions on the Nest Protect smoke alarm. It not only sends low battery alerts before the alarm starts chirping but it gives you the ability to silence the alarm from their app and has a cool “pathway” light ring that lights up when it detects motion.
This is a First Alert problem and not the Ring app. I use these smoke/CO2 dectors with Smartthings and Iris by Lowe’s before that and neither app, gave you a warning at all but the smoke alarm will chirp! I think its because these detectors use (2) AA batteries and not lithium and they can drop quickly! A flaw in the detectors design!I have used these for years and of course with me they never start to chirp until I’ve left home and it freaks my cat out for the whole day until I get home and change the batteries to get them to shut-up! Only thing I can say is when they get around 70% just change them to avoid the issue! Smartthings will say 70% yet the detector is chirping meaning LOW battery. I wish First Alert would redesign these to use the common CR2 batteries used in most wireless sensors (All of Ring’s gen1 sensors). Unfortunately Ring does not give you a percentage on the battery just an icon…
Thanks for the post because I was thinking of resetting mine and connect with RING but, I think I will leave them alone for now as I know how they act with Smartthings…
Ring app definitely already shows the low battery status in the history that means it knows at least once it reaches the low state if not before as a %. So at least I would like the ring app to include the low status from history into a notification.
Two years later, and… nothing.
The idea here is so obvious, and so trivial to implement, that it’s truly sad that this opportunity is completely missed by Ring.
Ring has a winning combo here compared to Nest, as the First Alert detectors are much less expensive, and just as capable.
It’s really just the low battery issue that is skipped.
I have 10 detectors connected to Ring, and can’t believe I need to go through this experience of hearing the nasty low-battery chirp when my Ring app already knows the battery is low.
As a software guy, it’s plain ridiculous.