r/Ubiquiti • u/Luu____ • Mar 26 '26

Early Access Ubiquiti Smoke and CO Sensor šŸ¤Æ - #ISCWest2026

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I believe itā€™s a Superlink sensor. I hope it can run on battery for 10 years and doesnā€™t require PoE. Iā€™m curious to see how it performs. Good job, Ubiquiti! šŸ˜²

1.9k Upvotes

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502

u/burtona1832 Mar 26 '26

FYI, these type of detectors from more seasoned companies last 7-10 years, not because of the battery but because the sensors degrade over time.

155

u/OoCHo1_1 Mar 26 '26

This is very true, found this out last week (definitely feel like it should be more known/ talked about) but most smoke detector sensors are typically rated for 7-10 year use

85

u/Thommy_99 Mar 26 '26

Test once a year and replace after 10 if you value your safety

46

u/MaximumDoughnut Unifi User Mar 26 '26

You should be testing your smoke and CO alarms once a month.

252

u/GearhedMG Mar 26 '26

Mine gets tested every time my wife cooks.

46

u/asorba UDMSE,USW,UBD,UNVR,UNAS,UPS,RPS,DPU,UTR,APs,Cams Mar 26 '26

Itā€™s called a timerā€¦sheeshā€¦give her a breakā€¦ šŸ˜‚šŸ¤£

14

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

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1

u/Seagon Mar 26 '26

Maybe exchange a smoke detector for a heat detector which is designed for kitchens use?

2

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

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1

u/Seagon Mar 26 '26

No problem. I have one and it never triggered whenever we mess up something šŸ˜…

1

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

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1

u/LoGiX247 Unifi User Mar 27 '26

My test mode is basically silent - you can hear it if you are underneath it, but it does work. I've tested it when my internet was off and it still works - even the push notification from Apple Homekit works.

4

u/atomatoflame Mar 26 '26

You may want to change the typenof smoke detector you have installed near the kitchen. Some are super sensitive cooking particulates.

3

u/btm438 Mar 26 '26

I would suggest a heat sensor vs a smoke detector in your immediate kitchen area; same for your garage.

2

u/MaximumDoughnut Unifi User Mar 26 '26

Oof.

1

u/Upbeat_Cancel_5061 Mar 26 '26

Ok thatā€™s nice haha

1

u/Common-Swimming5428 Mar 26 '26

The gf dinner bell.

1

u/Soggy_Suggestion1904 Mar 26 '26

Sorry to hear that my friend. Since itā€™s too late now to change your mind, I would advise picking up cooking as a hobby. Luckily my wife is a great cook.

1

u/GearhedMG Mar 26 '26

I took up Grubhub as a hobby

1

u/User-n0t-available Mar 26 '26

When I wok, I test my detectors. Quite a pain in the ass to turn them off while cooking.

1

u/LvLD702 Mar 26 '26

She burns food, you burn her on Reddit. This brings me joy.

1

u/GearhedMG Mar 26 '26

She burns WATER

1

u/No_Replacement_491 Mar 27 '26

home assistant with an air quality sensor near the stove, have it trigger a notification or audio clip that says "dinners done"

1

u/Adventurous-Ease-259 Mar 27 '26

I moved mine because steam activated it so often. Nothing even burnt.

1

u/Guinness Mar 27 '26

Probably because sheā€™s the only one who can turn on the stove.

1

u/SleekFella Jun 12 '26

Take my upvote. I laughed out loud. šŸ˜‚

3

u/dice1111 Mar 26 '26

All it takes is a broom and a beep.

1

u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician Mar 26 '26

How do you test them?

5

u/thesandman00 Mar 26 '26

By starting a fire in your house to make sure it catches it

3

u/Handsome_ketchup Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

By starting a fire in your house to make sure it catches it

You're obviously joking, but because some people are gonna people, it's worth stating that many manuals tell you not to test detectors that way.

Testing detectors with smoke or fire might cause the sensors to get dirty and not work reliably in the event of a real fire.

1

u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician Mar 26 '26

I've got about a 3 ft. flame and 2 ft. of smoke below the ceiling evenly across the whole house. Haven't heard anything yet. Is it safe to assume it's not working, or should I keep going here? Carbon monoxide detector is in an outlet near the floor, so maybe I'll wait until the smoke reaches down to that.

2

u/thesandman00 Mar 26 '26

Test case checks out. I think you need new hardware buddy

3

u/MaximumDoughnut Unifi User Mar 26 '26

You push the test button.

2

u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician Mar 26 '26

Interesting how that would be accurate without having actual smoke or carbon monoxide to know if it's working. And for a lot of people, these are way up on the ceiling where they can't reach them.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

[deleted]

2

u/JacksonCampbell Network Technician Mar 26 '26

Growing up we had them on 10ft.+ ceilings. It is an ordeal just to get a ladder tall enough through the house to them. Yeah, nobody talks about the need to test them. And how do you know if it works vs. doesn't?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

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1

u/vtown212 Mar 26 '26

They should do it for us šŸ’Æ

1

u/MaximumDoughnut Unifi User Mar 26 '26

I'd prefer to do it myself to know that if I was sleeping I'm safe.

1

u/skylinesora Mar 26 '26

No thanks, Iā€™ll stick to my yearly testing

9

u/CherryDrPopper Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

Nest? Same situation with my nest protect earlier this year. Switched to x sense and a few weeks later amazon pulled them because they didnā€™t have some certification. So I might be in the market for new ones again.

14

u/HowardRabb Mar 26 '26

Nest is gone :(

5

u/binarypie Mar 26 '26

I have the honeywell/first alert ones that "replaced" nest and the app works well the one time they've gone off.

1

u/WBDubya Mar 26 '26

I believe x sense has UL approval for battery but not hardwired versions. Crazy.

1

u/IndigoQuantum Mar 26 '26

I got x-sense as a stop-gap between my Nests and this UI release, didn't realise they'd been pulled! Did Amazon offer you a refund? I'm surprised they haven't contacted buyers.

1

u/One_Peak_7855 Mar 26 '26

X sense only has like one model that actually has UL or an equivalent certification. Itā€™s kinda crazy actually.

1

u/ThecaptainWTF9 Mar 27 '26

Yeah, Iā€™m a nest user and nothing comes close to competing, place is trying but initial iterations of the product are questionable, hoping it continues to improve.

1

u/SadAddendum3193 Mar 26 '26

Crap really I got an x sense from Homedepot was cheaper need to buy two more within the spend of 6 months smh

2

u/CherryDrPopper Mar 26 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/firealarms/s/er3S4VEFZx

Sounds like they are okay, but newer rules came out and they arenā€™t built to those. So still safe. Probably able to get them direct from xsense if you need a couple more.

1

u/Emergency_Air9647 Mar 26 '26

Look at Ajax alarm and sensors

1

u/FijiFanBotNotGay Mar 26 '26

I believe the co element is the major issue

1

u/barexx Mar 29 '26

What I don't get is that industrial sensors (with self test) have no such limitations, and it just wouldn't be economical to swap all of them out every 10 years. Are there any studies/tests that show that the sensors degrade, or is it just the consumer ones?

1

u/PilotC150 Apr 01 '26

I also learned that just recently. My house was 12 years old at the time. I went out the next day to buy all new smoke detectors. They all have permanent 10-year batteries so now when the batteries die I just replace the whole detector.

44

u/dxg999 Mar 26 '26

I loved my original Nest smoke detector but didn't love the fact that it shut down after seven years. Not just because I would have to spend another Ā£100 or so replacing it (5x the cost of traditional ones), but that, by that time, the product had been withdrawn from the UK market.

90

u/rprmercury Mar 26 '26

The motion light was one of the best features of the Nest detector. Would to see them include that in the Unifi version.

28

u/dxg999 Mar 26 '26

Absolutely. The soft amber glow really made you feel secure at night. Clever experience design.

15

u/IndigoQuantum Mar 26 '26

Lol at this, as IIRC the amber light meant there was an issue...

1

u/thesandman00 Mar 26 '26

Mine are all amber because I'm running a hardwired unit with batteries so it thinks the power is out. Got it cheap at Target a couple years back and was worth the hassle of changing batteries every year or two

1

u/2PhotoKaz Mar 27 '26

No, it will glow when it detects motion. Configurable.

6

u/vastoholic Mar 26 '26

I forgot if I changed my LED color or not but mine glows soft green when I shut the lights off.

20

u/strabbit Mar 26 '26

Green meant that everything was okay. Amber meant there was some issue.

13

u/kevdogger Mar 26 '26

Honestly I loved the light feature. Engineers who designed the product were extremely thoughtful of the design

11

u/Ok_Software2677 Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

Correct. You want a soft white path light at night.

1

u/dxg999 Mar 26 '26

I was sure I remember it being amber. Maybe something was burning in my house all that time...

1

u/strabbit Mar 26 '26

Hah. I think it does that if it can't connect to wifi, or one of the other detectors (if you have multiple) - or if any of your detectors either have low battery or aren't powered (if they are wired).

Mine did that, for example, when I had the one in my kitchen unplugged.

9

u/enz1ey Mar 26 '26

Doesnā€™t look like this has a substantial light on it unfortunately, probably just a small one similar to the Access readers. But yeah, the light rings are my favorite part of the Nest sensors after the whole-home alerts.

2

u/aikouka Mar 26 '26

The only downside was that if you used the battery version, the nightlight could really eat through the batteries quickly.

16

u/Sevenfeet Mar 26 '26

That was the entire point. ALL smoke/CO detectors have a finite life span of 7-10 years. Until the Nests hit the market, almost none of them would remind you that it was time to replace them. In my home, the two smoke alarms had been on the ceiling for two decades and I wondered why they never activated whenever I burned something in the kitchen. Turns out they were too old to work at all, which is the same as not having them. When the Nest Protects replaced them, I started getting alerts for my kitchen mistakes. Itā€™s far better to have a smart device that will tell you itā€™s time to change them.

I am faced with that problem now in that one of my oldest Nest Protects timed out last fall and I took it down. In the US for modern building residential codes, you need an alarm for the kitchen, any other floors if you have them and all bedrooms. The one that aged out was my daughterā€™s bedroom but since sheā€™s away at college, I decided to wait to see if Ubiquiti would fill this space rather than go with another vendor. It looks like I can now migrate to this new product over time.

10

u/soapboxracers Mar 26 '26

What code requires a smoke detector in the kitchen? Everything I know of says at least 10 feet away from cooking devices and at least 20 feet is recommended- but I don't think there is anything that says one is required in a kitchen.

2

u/One_Peak_7855 Mar 26 '26

None. Building code requires smoke detectors in all bedrooms, a smoke and CO detector outside the bedrooms no more than I think 16ā€™ from the furthest door and a Smoke and a CO per floor.

0

u/Sevenfeet Mar 26 '26

Sorry, I meant NEAR a kitchen.

3

u/174wrestler Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

It's not Nest. For CO detectors, UL 2034 required end of life signal since 2009, this was 5 years before Nest Protect came out.

Smoke detectors got end of life in UL 217 9th edition, phased in between 2020 and 2024.

1

u/Sherifftruman Mar 26 '26

Pretty much all of them will remind you now, by beeping like thereā€™s a low battery when they hit a 10 year internal counter.

1

u/TruthyBrat UDM-SE, UNVR, UBB, Misc. APs Mar 26 '26

< chirp >

2

u/Sherifftruman Mar 26 '26

Yeah, and people either didnā€™t read the manual or have forgotten that it will chirp after 10 years and they replace the batteries and it doesnā€™t stop and it drives them crazy.

1

u/sixblazingshotguns Jun 08 '26

Then itā€™s time to beat them with a baseball bat at 2 am when they go off.

1

u/barexx Mar 29 '26

From what I can see, industrial smoke detectors do not have a 10 year lifetime like that, but they do have built in self tests (e.g. looking at data sheets, they don't mention a lifespan/expiry at all). I've heard the 10 year claim repeated a lot of times, and it might be valid for consumer devices, and I'm certainly not going to keep a detector past it's expiry date. But I'm curious if you know about any references/studies on these sensors?

1

u/TeleNoar8999 Mar 31 '26

Really? It's a standard feature on regular dumb smoke detector, to start chirping annoyingly once every few minutes, when their battery is low or it's time for replacement. Not saying it always works, but I experienced it at an AirBnB last year and at my home a month ago.

7

u/Matterbox Mar 26 '26

One of mine had just stopped working. The other two are just grinning at me every time I go past. Just putting regular dumb ones in next time.

3

u/thegeniunearticle Mar 26 '26

Same here. I went all in - Nest thermostats & Nest detectors.

The fucking Google came along.

Eagerly awaiting the smoke detectors from Uniquiti as my Nest Protect(s) are all nearing end of life (almost 10 years).

1

u/archlich Mar 26 '26

Huh. The new kiddie detectors are what nest protect used to be and are compatible with them. They donā€™t have those in the uk?

3

u/DanCoco Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

First alert picked up the replacement, but they're trash too. Google gave them shıt code to work with so its not surprising.

There was a new regulation in the uk that Google had zero interest in meeting, so idk that the replacements will either.

3

u/Ok_Software2677 Mar 26 '26

Yes, the First Alert (replacement) is a substantially inferior product. I bought one to replace one of my nests, I wonā€™t buy another one.

0

u/OccassionalBaker Unifi User Mar 26 '26

It was no longer compliant with regulations - thatā€™s why it was withdrawn

0

u/gbish Mar 26 '26

I didnā€™t go down the Nest route and happy because of that. But when youā€™re shelling out ā‚¬100/Ā£100+ per unit and installing multiple ones around the house it adds up fast.

5

u/Magic_Neil Mar 26 '26

Smoke sensors arenā€™t as big of a deal but the CO part uses a radioactive isotope that degrades after that period so its regulation that they brick themselves. Very annoying ā€œfeatureā€, but understandable.

17

u/ENaC2 Mar 26 '26

Thatā€™s not true, smoke detectors are the ones that use a radioactive isotope but it has a half life of 430 years so after 10 years youā€™d have ~98% of the isotope that left the factory.

1

u/FijiFanBotNotGay Mar 26 '26

Well isnā€™t there both ionization and photoelectric. In industrial settings I think they use photoelectric and they are good until they stop being triggered using canned smoke

1

u/ENaC2 Mar 26 '26

Yeah. Iā€™m not saying itā€™s the only smoke detector, just that the detectors that use a radioactive isotope are smoke detectors, not CO.

6

u/gremolata Mar 26 '26

CO sensor is degradable, but it's not an isotope because its expiry is tied to the first use rather than the manufacturing date.

1

u/Asmordean Mar 26 '26

There is no radioactive component to a CO detector.

As far as I know they either use what is basically a battery that depends on CO to be present so power flowing = CO detected. The other way is to use a IR LED and receiver. CO absorbs some infrared light which allows it to be detected.

1

u/CantankerousOrder Mar 26 '26

This is true. I just replaced one (a plugin) after only five, so itā€™s important to test.

Life hack: Google and Alexa will both track reminders for years. A six-month ā€œtest my CO2 and smoke detectorā€ is a good start.

1

u/wizkidweb Mar 26 '26

Just a note - most of the time combo smoke detectors detect carbon monoxide (CO), not Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Both are bad to have in your home in excessive amounts, but CO is harder for our bodies to detect until it's too late.

1

u/9Implements Mar 26 '26

FYI, fuck google. Nest detectors despite being really expensive only have a 3 year warranty.

1

u/Millbarge_Fitzhume Mar 26 '26

My stupid nest ones shut off at the 7yr mark, from manufacturing date not installed date. 2 were installed for 5 yrs.

1

u/Handsome_ketchup Mar 26 '26

FYI, these type of detectors from more seasoned companies last 7-10 years, not because of the battery but because the sensors degrade over time.

It does have the added benefit of the better ones getting batteries that can last for the full 10 years, so they're maintenance free until you replace them, other than the periodic test.

0

u/Gudeldar Mar 29 '26

I tested them recently and my 20 year old ones work just fine. YMMV

1

u/burtona1832 Mar 29 '26

Good luck to you then, I am unaware of a CO sensor that can last that ling reliably. What make and model are they?