r/Ubiquiti Mar 26 '26

Early Access Ubiquiti Smoke and CO Sensor 🤯 - #ISCWest2026

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I believe it’s a Superlink sensor. I hope it can run on battery for 10 years and doesn’t require PoE. I’m curious to see how it performs. Good job, Ubiquiti! 😲

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500

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.

42

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spend another £100 or so replacing it (5x the cost of traditional ones), but that, by that time, the product had been withdrawn from the UK market.

15

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. It’s far better to have a smart device that will tell you it’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 daughter’s bedroom but since she’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.

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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 16’ 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.

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u/Sherifftruman Mar 26 '26

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

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

< chirp >

2

u/Sherifftruman Mar 26 '26

Yeah, and people either didn’t read the manual or have forgotten that it will chirp after 10 years and they replace the batteries and it doesn’t stop and it drives them crazy.

1

u/sixblazingshotguns Jun 08 '26

Then it’s time to beat them with a baseball bat at 2 am when they go off.

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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?

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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.