Kategoria: in English

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.