Popp Smoke Detector and Siren

HolgerL · November 21, 2018, 11:08am

Sadly this is true. Mine had the battery empty after about 10 Months. And installing new batteries always ends up in a alarm desaster with all of them beeping! Somehow installing the battery triggers short term the alarm.

HomeAutomation · November 21, 2018, 11:13am

I monitor alive of my battery z-wave devices. Until now all my sirens are alive. I will see, what happens on battery change. I will send my wife to outside at this time

HolgerL · November 21, 2018, 12:47pm

When battery goes down, they make a short beep every now and then, but it is relatively loud. After 3 of them did that I ordered new Lithium 9V batteries and exchanged them one week later. Until then all reported still 100% Battery The old batteries had been around 8.5V then.

rlkoshak · November 21, 2018, 5:31pm

I have 3 ZCOMBOs. I think they are only available in the US and I can’t say I recommend them. They can’t link to each other, or maybe it is more accurate to say that there is only one association group so they can either report alarms to each other or back to the controller, not both. They don’t distinguish between smoke and CO alarms and just use the simple alarm command class.

But the battery does last well over a year. The battery seems to report accurately as well. Though they will start to beep when the battery gets down to about 60%. But it takes longer than a year to get to that point so I just save the used ones up to use in remotes or the kid’s remote controlled cars and such.

For me it is pretty important to change out the batteries before the alarms start to beep because my dog is TERRIFIED of the smoke alarm. If they even start to chirp we will have to spend half an hour coaxing her out of what ever hiding place she found (corgis are surprisingly adept at finding a place to hide). And then she will stick to us like glue for the rest of the day. If our house ever catches fire I’m pretty certain we will lose the dog.

Celaeno1 · December 3, 2018, 7:25pm

@rlkoshak @sihui @HolgerL @HomeAutomation
@antares2001 @chr1s @kristoffer_c_johanss @bernd_d @wl12

Hello Folks,

here are my experiences with my 5 Popp 004001:

If battery is nearly empty then it starts peeping once a day. Then twice a day. Then 4 times a day. Then once every hour, then twice every hour.

This behaviour lasts about 2 or 3 weeks. If you have patience enough you can also wait until battery is completely empty. Then the smoke detector gives a permanent alarm lasting about 1 minute. Then it stops. AND NOW above mentioned RULE sends a notification within this last minute that battery-level is zero. HOORAY!!!

This is bullshit engineering!

By the way, here are my drain peroids.

Original Popp Lithium battery: 8-10 month.
Aldi Süd (=German discounter): 5-6 month.

The Aldi battery only costs 0,75 Euro (75 ct) per piece.

Product name: Activ Energy Super Alkaline.

Yes, it’s really an alcaline battery!!!

I calculated the total amount for 10 years: 15 Euro for each smoke detector. I think it is OK.

See also here: also cheap and even better than Aldi, a 9V from Lidl, = Aerocell !!!

rlkoshak · December 3, 2018, 7:45pm

You have way more patience with intermittent beeping than I do, even if it didn’t terrify my dog.

Thanks for posting the results of your experiment!

chr1s · December 4, 2018, 10:51am

→ signed. Many thanks for testing.

vossivossi · December 4, 2018, 8:12pm

…also my experience with this device, although I never tested it as far as you did. Thank you very much for these insights!

bernd_d · December 4, 2018, 9:05pm

@Celaeno1 Thanks a lot for testing and sharing! When I change the battery the alarm goes on - always when I put in a new battery and of course meshes through the other smoke detectors for a couple of seconds. Do you have the same behaviour with your 5 detectors?

However, I really like the function to use the siren for an alarm system with the Popp’s.

Any experience with the battery level notification from the Fibaro Smoke detectors? Do they send out the correct battery level ?

Bernd

Celaeno1 · December 4, 2018, 9:24pm

Yes I do. Every time when I changed the battery all Smoke Detectors in the same association group began to beep about 5 seconds.

antares2001 · December 5, 2018, 2:02pm

Same for me. When putting in a new battery, all of them start beeping. That’s really annoying especially if you have small kids that are asleep while you change the battery. The howling then is endless

HomeAutomation · December 5, 2018, 2:10pm

One question. Do you use the mesh function of the smoke sensors? Maybe this causes the beep. I use them as stand alone sensors. Only OH sees all of them and activates the alarm on the others by a rule

antares2001 · December 5, 2018, 2:12pm

No - I have not configured any mesh. Neither have I configured in OpenHAB a rule to trigger all. It seems they send an alarm frame, because my Fibaro relays also trigger light blinking.

HolgerL · December 5, 2018, 2:49pm

I have meshed 3 of my 6, one on each floor. this was my intention from the beginning.
I think there should not be more then 4 meshed together, because of the latency between them. Then one can trigger the next and after alarm off it gets an alarm message from one of the others which was taking a while to receive and then send out again. This makes the whole crowd peeping like hell without end.

If I did knew that before, I would not have invested the money for the POPP sensors.

antares2001 · December 5, 2018, 2:58pm

@HolgerL I agree with you. They are all way too expensive for what they deliver.

Guido_van_Haasteren · December 28, 2018, 1:23am

same here, after about 9 months with 3 Popp 004001’s. I cannot get them to work without sirens all through the neighbourhood.

HomeAutomation · February 25, 2019, 10:08am

After one year the batterie of my two smoke sensors are gone. I replaced them one by one and do not see the problem with alarm “siress all through”.

Battery level was always 100% But they were beeping every hour to indicate the low battery. very bad implementation of the firmware. (device knows low battery but send 100% to the controller)

HolgerL · February 25, 2019, 11:34am

Problem with the Popp Sensors is, that they are not designed in one go.
First these had been normal Smoke sensors with low bat beep and so on.
Then they attached a 2. PCB for the ZWAVE communication. But it seems that they only connect power supply and alarm signal to the zwave PCB.

Holger

Guido_van_Haasteren · March 1, 2019, 8:34pm

I had 3 Popp smoke detectors for 9 months, then they started waking me up at night with 100% battery power. I asked my supplier and they cintacted Popp. This is what they wrote back:

please check the following points to exclude possible causes:

Possible causes for false alarms can be:

Battery status of the detector

Small insects

Dust deposit

Water/boiling steam

Precipitation (at high humidity or high temperature changes)

Hairspray, deodorant spray etc.

Electromagnetic interference (EMC) from adjacent power sources

Please check if the following conditions are observed:

Light reflections or stimuli from the surroundings (light sources should be at least 50 cm away)

Positioning of the detector (50 cm from walls, corners and furniture)

Another reason could be that at least on of the 3 platines is defective.
If you haven’t disabled the meshing between the smoke sensors by changing the parameters 5 and 6 of each detector to the value 0, the defective one can still trigger the others.

We usually recommend this if you have a large number of Popp smoke detectors (POPE4001) and also during commissioning and to avoid alarms from other detectors. In that cases you can also setting up an alarm via the controller.

Try the following steps to find the problem:

deactivate the meshing between the smoke sensors (see above)

check battery on every smoke detector:
To ensure that the issue isn’t related to the battery, remove the battery and remove the Z-Wave module (slightly pull it up). Insert the battery again. If the siren is still crying, then the battery must be changed.
Otherwise, remove the battery, connect the Z-Wave module again and try to reset it by pressing and hold the small button on the module for 10 seconds. Please see the manual for further information:
https://manuals.zwave.eu/backend/make.php?lang=en&sku=pope004001&type=popp

if the detector is still beeping altough the battery is ok, then the z-wave platine seems to be defective - in that case please do a RMA

if a reset was performed, an inclusion of the devices is necessary again

For me, it turned out that one of the detectors could not be excluded. (still struggling to get it off of my controller).
The other two kept beeping when exluded. They only stopped when I took off the z-wave module. According to Popp, this means the zwave module is defective while the battery is still okay.

My supplier told me Popp did not want to deliver new detectors or return my money But my supplier gave me the chance to replace them by Fibaro smoke detectors while only paying the price difference. I took this chance and I am very happy with them. I installed them in less than 20 minutes, including integration with my sitemap and rules. No more Popp for me! But I can recommend my supplier to anyone who sends me a pm (and lives in EU).

Celaeno1 · July 21, 2019, 10:54am

@sihui

sihui:

My Popp 004001 is working fine with the following items:

Contact    POPP_Smoke_1_C    "Sensoralarm Smoke [%s]"    <fire>    (gTest)        { zwave="9:command=SENSOR_BINARY,respond_to_basic=true" }
Switch    POPP_Smoke_1_Sw    "Schalter POPP Sirene"    (gTest)        { zwave="9:command=switch_binary" }
Number    POPP_Smoke_1_Battery    "POPP Smoke: [%d %%]"    <battery>    (gBattery)        { zwave="9:command=battery" }

All config parameters are on default. Association groups are all set to the controller.

When did your switch POPP_Smoke_1_Sw run the last time? Was it running well?

My 5 Popp (004001) (switching the sirens ON/OFF) were running well while I first configured them.

I tried out after 15 month, again. Now, when I switch on the siren, also the command SENSOR_BINARY = “Fire Alarm” is triggered somehow. But I did not change ANY parameter.

But the zwave binding has changed many times in the meantime…

…now I’m on snapshot 1486 (2nd January 2019)

Has someone else the “siren switch” running? What are your experiences with switching the siren?