We live in an old wooden house with two floors and three fireplaces in each floor. Some rooms have smoke alarms, some also have carbon monoxide (CO) alarms. Some rooms have alarms but no fireplaces, some have fireplaces but no alarms. All our alarms are standalone devices running on 9V alkaline batteries.
I’ve been thinking about modernizing the setup for a long time, but last weekend I finally got into investigating the options and even placing an order — which, on Monday morning, was cancelled by the vendor. (”We are sorry to inform you that [X-Sense model] XP01-W only has American standard and not European standard.”)
There weren’t any details in the email about which ”European standard” the device I had ordered six of was missing, but it wasn’t missing any of the features I’m after: minimalistic design with a big button for muting and no LCD displays, 10-year (lithium) battery life, and connectivity to other alarms through customizable networks — I want only one paired device in another floor to co-respond to a detection, not a deafening sextett to sound off.
After some digging I found First Alert and Kidde offering devices similar in function (networkable combination alarms, that is) but uglier. But just like X-Sense, they only ship within the US, and not even to all states. It would be mildly interesting to know what the presumably compliance-related issue behind that limitation is.
The only two brands left to choose between were Google and Xindum. The choice was fairly easy, given I didn’t want devices that speak (or expect me to), devices that rely on Wi-Fi, nor devices that cost over €120 each. Let’s see whether the obscure Chinese brand even exists when the time comes to replace the first of the six alarms I ordered, but then again, I know way more products discontinued by Google than by Xindum.