I thought an ideal use case for ZWave devices, would be a Carbon Monoxide detector and/or Fire Detector that would send you an alert on certain conditions.
Well, sure enough, there is one. The First Alert Combo.
I bought one of these, and they were priced right - about $40. I had a First Alert fire detector mounted in the spot for it, and the bracket was exactly the same as the new one (how nice is that?). So mounting it took 2 seconds.
The next step was to pair it to the ZWave Hub, and from experience, that can be a hassle with certain devices. I was a little bit worried that they were marketing it for a Ring Hub, with a concern it might work for a Ring Hub but not for a more standard hub like a Wink2 or a Hubitat.
But it only took 3 tries to get it to pair.
First Attempt:
- I added the batteries.
- I slid the batteries in, holding the Test button
- I released the Test button
- I added a device on my hub (by vendor, First Alert was listed), and clicked "start inclusion".
This didn't work. So, I re-attempted.
- I slide out the battery tray
- I went to my hub app, added the device by vendor, and clicked "start inclusion"
- I pulled out one of the two batteries
- I reinserted the battery I pulled out.
- I slid the battery tray back in, holding the Test Button while sliding
- I released the Test button
At this point, I watched the app, and it sat there on "Start Inclusion", as though it were processing. I decided to leave it, and then came back, re-launched the app, hit "Connect to Hub" and then "Devices", and there it was! I hit Refresh on the app, and all of the pertinent statistics showed up.
Not too bad at all.
