Designing a better goddamn smoke detector.

[nonethefewer]

The smoke detector "oh noes the battery is perishing!!1" beep went off in my room at two thirty o'fuck in the AM. Who came up with this shit?

Some ideas about improved smoke detection, compiled by me, an underslept headachey grump:

* Wire it into the house and have a battery backup.

* Since it would be wired into the wall with a battery backup, if the battery starts to run out, a quiet chirp for "oh noes battery" would be sufficient.

* Possible: Also have it chirp if there is no battery in there at all. One should not trust that electricity will be available in case of a fire.

* Have the alarm start low in sound and increase rapidly, so that cooking smoke doesn't completely freak out the cats. (This idea came from the internet somewhere. All glory to that anonymous person.)

* Big Damn Buttons that very obviously state what they're for. No more "press down for 3.2 seconds or until it pulses twice in octarine", just a button that says "TEST ME" and another button that says "CLARM DOWN, JEEZ".

** Because fuck, who knows how long to press down a fucking button while it is SHRIEKING IN YOUR EAR? Answer: aliens.

* No "smart" shit. I can't stand most IoT stuff, and the idea of having a networked smoke detector fills me with dread.

Poking holes in my proposal: totally welcome. I'll put your names on the patent.

Comments

[ckd]

For wired units that are interconnected, have the low battery warning be one chirp at a time for the ones that aren't the reporting unit and 4 in a row for the one that is.

[tiger_spot]

I would like a light, or perhaps a very quiet continuous tone, from the affected detector. My problem is that the chirps are not very directional, and spaced far enough apart that it is very hard to tell if I have located the chirping one.

[siderea]

Can we have a "battery low" light? Like, yellow?

[brooksmoses]

Oh, that would be excellent. If it needs to beep (as a backup, say), perhaps it can beep after a day or two of the light being on.

[siderea]

While you're taking requests, I'd like one that is easy to open and close for battery replacement, ideally in a way that is not ambiguous with attaching it/detaching it from the ceiling.

Or is it necessary to have a replacable battery at all? Can we stick a rechargable in there? Or just have a capacitor to tide through power outages? (Or are they not sufficient duration?)

[mapache]

Ours have wired power. They still have batteries, in case the power goes out, so they still chirp and need replacing. We can still never tell which one is chirping without multiple rounds of wandering between them all, waiting, and trying to learn if it's the one you're standing under, then typically giving up and changing all the batteries anyway.

The two in our hallway are smart ones, that start off by gently warning you about smoke with spoken voice, before escalating to eventual beeping. Unfortunately, our dog is smart, too, so he has learned that if the ceiling demon makes any noise whatsoever, no matter how subtle and polite, it's time to flip out because it could work its way up to shrieking real soon now. At least those two have rechargeable cells and don't need their batteries changed.