looking for an alternative for the nest smart smoke detector could this be what you're looking
for hello i am wonder 001 and this is my review of the first alert one link smart smoke and carbon
monoxide alarm right now we're looking at the box because well the alarm itself isn't much to look
at and that's perfectly fine it's a smoke detector you don't need it to be pretty you need it to be
functional so we're gonna take some cues off the box itself first and foremost being your eye is
probably drawn down here to the lower right hand corner where it is stating it is compatible with
apple homekit so this is going to be one of those iot devices that actually is compatible with apple
homekit so if you live in that universe this is probably something that you should strongly
consider in the upper left-hand corner here you can see that it is the battery operated
model however they do have a wired model myself i went with the battery because well i don't have
a wired smoke alarm system and well i wanted to be able to put these where i wanted to put them
on the front we also have emergency notifications that push notification to your phone
voice alert from the smoke detector itself and two-in-one protection meaning that it is both
smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector there's not much other information but we are
going to flip it over to the back here because it just kind of reinforces what the front was
telling us battery powered you have apps in in the apple app store and the google play store
it is bluetooth it is wi-fi it's got five year limited warranty and it is a photo electronic
sensor so aside from the things that we're covered up front we also have wireless interconnectivity
between smoke detectors so if you have a lot of these in your house they'll talk to each other
three cell batteries which are included and then you know meet your ul standards so that
is the outside of the box i don't normally do this because well the product is more interesting but
the product is just a smoke detector so because it is a smoke detector there actually is a bit of
setup that goes along with it it's not simply just hang this up and you're good to go so let's take
a look at what the setup of the one link looks like i normally don't do unboxings as part of
the setup process but i figured for something like this it's kind of important to know what
you're getting in the box along with how to set it up so at the top you've got
pretty much a little pamphlet with directions
important information to know you have the smoke detector itself as well as the mounting bracket
and the hardware to mount the bracket to your ceiling you'll notice that it's actually a little
more substantial than some of your other fire detector mounting brackets that's because this is
kind of a substantial device and needs that extra help and last but not least there is you know
cyclopacket in here let's start the setup process you will need the application in order to
set up this device the reason you're getting this device is because it is a smart device so
to do so we come down to the lower right we select add device we have choices as
to what we have in our case we have the battery alarm and here it's letting us know
product setup so we can say where it's going to be set up which in our case is home
oh we need to add a new home so we're just going to call this home because well that's
where it's going to be room we're going to say new room this is uh going to be second floor okay
and then we have alarm announcement which is
choose the name your alarm announces in an emergency so in this case downstairs let's
see hallway living or master office hmm they really don't have a choice for where i have it
so we're going to select the closest thing that we can which i guess it's going to be on my second
floor but it's going to be in the right in front of the master bedroom so at least we'll know where
it is so that's kind of a limitating factor i really wish they would let you choose something
better or had more choices continue all right so it's letting us know we're going to need a ladder
2.4 gigahertz and a screwdriver so we're gonna say continue so it's telling you where it
recommends that you mount this so we're gonna hit continue mount your alarm blah blah blah
will guide you through okay simple setup process so apparently you need to actually attach it to
the base before it will allow you to sync it that is something to know make sure you read
apparently i'm trying to do this too quickly and did not notice that
so i should be able to and here we go it's already checking
so here we go it syncs so make sure that you attach your base plate
or else it won't actually work so okay so do you see it we're going to click on there yes we do
because it's blinking it's in pairing mode
checking access point so it's going to check my iot network blinking green
still flashing still linking so here we go that's this particular one we're going to say connect
connection successful so it cut me off the wi-fi to come over here so we're going to select
our wi-fi network and it wants me to enter the password so i entered in the password off-camera
we'll make sure that this then links to my new iot network so it's connecting the accessory to wi-fi
device use yes connect
so connecting the phone back to the internet let's see if this actually connected the second
go around waiting for accessory to complete so it's looking for the smoke detector again
smoke detector has stopped blinking so it's connecting all right so master bedroom location
so there you go and the device is ready so we just hit get started and there we go batteries okay
location last check now if you actually read and mount the plate first to the back of it you'll be
able to set this up in less time than it took me to actually do i did have to go through the
linking process twice and that's probably just because it's new and it needed to access the
network but there we go under 10 minutes if you read the directions first and not try and film it
so as you saw there as long as you follow the directions when you're setting it up
it's actually not terrible to do and you see i've replaced the box with the actual
one link smoke detector itself so here is that battery panel that you saw during setup with our
interchangeable batteries so if you needed to they are replaceable now on the back you have
your normal deactivation tab but during setup you probably saw i had to lock it into the mounting
bracket before i could actually get it to actuate which was something a little odd for me but
i'll i'll take it the front here you can see it's just plastic there's a bright light ring
right there and a speaker there now the way that this detects smoke is actually
using a photo electronic sensor inside now me telling you that this works is one thing
but i have found in doing my research smoke detector people actually like to see the smoke
detector being tested officially so here we go i got a can of smoke that you use to test smoke
detectors so you can actually see it in action all right new firmware update we're gonna do smoke
test again and we're gonna see if it does a push notification and if it actually sends a message to
the one in the basement which is what it should be doing so here we go smoke test number two
ah
hey
evacuate evacuate there's fire in the hallway
evacuate there's fire in the hallway
now i really went to town on this so it's probably going to do that for a little bit
oh it just signaled all clear
i still don't have a notification on my phone i know sometimes they say it takes a little bit
but coming into the app i'm looking no set of recent alarms or any indication that it
actually went off so the question is did it actually go to the basement because right now
it did not push to the app even after the app update so there you go it took a little going
in order to get that to actuate the smoke detector which might be a good thing and help
prevent false positives but that's only part of the ecosystem the smoke detectors themselves
talk to an app on your phone so let's take a look at what the app looks like one link
app what we're looking at here is the main screen of the one link app you can see i have three
different smoke detectors listed here you can see the check-ins for each so hour one minute
one minute now i have seen this go as long as three weeks before anything has actually
checked in and one of my problems with the one link app itself and one link system if i'm being
honest but we're here to actually look at the app lower right hand corner this is how you add a new
device pressing the plus sign you can select save sound battery alarm or wired alarm and i'm going
to select back because i did go through the setup process and we saw that coming over here to the
hamburger button you have your account information your faq email support call support terms and
privacy it also shows you the app version right there coming into account you will have at the top
your one link email account as well as the ability to attach it to alex a pandora spotify iheartradio
itunes and siriusxm that is because if you have the alarm that has the speaker built in you can
play those through the speaker on your fire alarm selecting one of your alarms will give you status
activity we see here's my one link everything is okay last checked in notice there's no information
really there but it shows battery was at 100 and wi-fi is okay you can test your smoke detector
right from here and silence it if you actually do get a push notification recent history
you can see nothing's been happening however i have run several tests on my second floor
and you can see nothing is listed so that's kind of a hit in my opinion of the app because it
doesn't seem that it's pulling information from the smoke detectors in a timely fashion and with
a smoke detector that's very important upper right hand corner you have a sprocket selecting this it
brings you into the options menu for your account so here i have my thing is just called home
i can add another location here are my three smoke detectors and i've indicated which name i wanted
for each i can select one and it will show me more information about it i'm in home because
you can again set these up all over the place and then i can delete home i'm going to go back
so up here where it says home that's because i listed my place as home if i had a investment
property i could list it there however would not recommend because it's just not pulling data
from those smoke detectors into the app and i waited until there was a update to the app because
a lot of people were complaining about it and i thought man can't be really can't really be that
bad and i'm going to tell you yes the application is horrible it is not pulling data whatsoever
here's the thing i really wanted to love this smoke detector however on android i have found
far too many faults to make this something that i could say you should go out and buy
it doesn't do push notification to the phone i waited an hour it doesn't do anything when i spray
canned i also had a video camera set up downstairs in my basement to see if it would capture it
sending a communication to all the other smoke detectors i have in my house because
i bought three of these and it didn't send that communication when you run a test from the app
itself to one of the units it signals on all other devices that are connected but to me
smoke should talk to all the other things let alone it should do a push notification especially
if i'm using a can of smoke to smoke this to test it like somebody actually would do for testing a
smoke detector just just those two things make it very difficult for me to say that this would
be a good nest alternative i mean it is cheaper than the nest smart smoke detector at 110 each
so you figure i got three of these i'm over 300 invested into this already while a nest second
gen smart smoke detector with two smart plugs is like 150 so there is a little savings but i want
it to be outside of the nest ecosystem since it's now owned by google and they go by google's terms
of service i i just want it out of that this was not what i was hoping for and i can't tell if it's
just because i'm on android or if it would work better with apple homekit there have been people
out there who say it works just it's not working for me on android and that could be a fault of the
app itself i actually went back and revisited my test a second time once they pushed an app
update within the last two weeks and it still gave me the same results so nest still expensive this
expensive for what you're getting you can buy a 40 smoke detector carbon monoxide just like this that
talks to the other ones in your house that's just not connected to an application for 40 dollars
you want to go even cheaper than that i did a review over there in the corner
of roost smart battery it is a way to make any dumb smoke detector a smart smoke detector at 35
dollars if that sounds interesting again go check that out i really wanted to love the one link
and it just right now i can't recommend it for the smart application features that they're touting
it's a good smoke detector but you're only going to get smoke detection and carbon monoxide on the
level it's on and it doesn't push notification to your phone or apparently unless you run a test
from the app itself they don't talk to each other this is going to be one that i have to say there
are better alternatives out there and i recommend you check those out if you're interested in this
because you have apple homekit and it seems to work with apple homekick i will leave a link
for it in the description below but i'll also leave a link to the roof smart battery as well
as the can of smoke that i used if you want to test out your own smoke detectors with that said
i have been wanderer 001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the
area below and as always thanks for watching if you found this video helpful consider giving it
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