I’ve poked around and seem to be in a minority as my primary interest is using Ring to provide around the clock monitoring of my 7 smoke detectors, one of which is a combined smoke/CO detector. With my limited understanding, I believe I can buy 7 Ring listeners that will feed their signal into a Ring device that will call my phone and if I don’t respond it will escalate to the 911 system. Has anybody got something like this working without buying Ring-compatible smoke detectors? If that’s what it takes I’ll do it, but it seems I should be able to buy 7 Ring listeners and put one by each of my existing smoke detectors and reach my objective.
Sorry if I’m the new guy who didn’t dig deeply enough into the existing threads but it seems everyone is scared of somebody breaking a window. I’m far more concerned with minimizing the impact of ‘another’ fire. We were at home and awakened by our smoke alarms. We called 911 and managed to keep a minor garage fire down to the level where we were ‘only’ out of the house for 16 weeks and lost many of our possessions. If we had not been home our possessions would have been bits of ash floating across the meadow, hence my interest in monitoring our smoke alarms. So my question is, will my vision actually work? And, which ‘doorbell’ do I need? Thanks for your time.
1 Like
Sadly, Ring hides the most important information on this.
You need the alarm and professional monitoring.
The alarms must have the proper audible tones to work as well.
https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/sections/360002568311-Ring-Alarm-Smoke-CO-Listener
Thanks for your response. It appears that what I want to do can be achieved, as long as I verify that my smoke alarms (all brand new) make a compatible tone.
I wonder why the Listeners are not available alongside all the other Ring devices at my local Home Depot? I’m going to seek out and discuss all this with some alarm installers. Maybe the Ring Listeners are problematic with false alarms or something. There certainly doesn’t seem to be a push to market them.
If your smoke alarms are interconnected you don’t need 7 listeners since they all go off when one goes off. I bought two listeners case one fails. I have had signal issues with my new Ring system. If yours are not interconnected I recommend it.
I had a panel style alarm before Ring with a relay tied to the smoke circuit. Since ring does not want to support fire zones I wired the relay to the alarm via a Ring retro kit. When the smoke alarm goes off it triggers a burglary zone. Not ideal Ring! I have it send me a push message when the fire zone “opens” since it wont trigger the alarm if off. I self monitor so I’m not worried it does not call the FD. Thats my belt and suspenders approach.
Looks like you can buy the FirstAlert Z-wave Smoke/CO detector at Costco - 3 alarms for $80! (Currently cheaper than 3 listeners)
https://www.costco.com/first-alert-z-wave-smoke-and-carbon-monoxide-alarm%2C-3-pack.product.100487243.html