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My house has 6 fire alarms, when they beep there is NO way to tell which one it is making the noise 2/2 the combination of short beep and irregular beeping inte

by bshep 9y ago

My house has 6 fire alarms, when they beep there is NO way to tell which one it is making the noise 2/2 the combination of short beep and irregular beeping interval. My solution is to just change all the batteries at once so i dont have to guess (and if you guess wrong you then you wont sleep tomorrow because of the beeping) I wish there was some visual indicator to tell which one was faulty.

dawnerd 9y ago
I believe they all beep because they want you to replace all the batteries. I had this happen a few months ago except it wasn't a low battery alarm. It kept yelling "FIRE FIRE" but then turning off. Of course FirstAlert apparently doesn't indicate which alarm is causing it. They say the initiating one flashes a different pattern but I didn't find one. Ended up, after getting no sleep at all, replacing all 9 of them with nests. At least then if one fails I'll know which one.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  This who thread had me feeling twitchy. How did any of these product designs make it to market?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    They weren't (probably still aren't) regulated enough. Manufacturers can get away with it because even if they screw up, an angry customer doesn't really affect their sales in any meaningful way.
- gasbag 9y ago
  Aren't Nest Protect alarms also linked? This harrowing video leads me to believe they are. It's a couple years old at this point though. (Turn your sound down, video is a poor soul trying to deactivate them.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY
lb1lf 9y ago
My smoke detectors made a boast on the packaging they featured a fool-proof low battery indication, without going into any details. I bought half a dozen of them to install in our new house years ago, thinking the nightly find-the-beeping-^+=¥€ games were finally a thing of the past. When one started beeping, I did the rounds, figuring I'd be back in bed in minutes. Well, I wasn't. Turned out the fool-proof indication was to have the normally green LED flash red instead. Did I mention that I am colour blind?
- michaelmior 9y ago
  Unfortunately as some who isn't colour blind and doesn't have any close friends who are, it's easy to forget about these concerns. I think attention to accessibility issues like this is one of the things that separates great designers from good ones.
  - lb1lf 9y ago
    Oh, it isn't all bad - now I get to kick my wife out of bed to find the offender, instead.
- mark-r 9y ago
  The smoke detectors in my house are supposed to do that, but many times I've found one chirping and the light is nice and green.
macintux 9y ago
That reminded me of an iOS quirk that thankfully has since been resolved. A few years ago I used "Find my iPhone" to chase down my phone in the house, buried under some pile or another. Unfortunately I had earlier been using AirPlay to play music through remote speakers, so of course the emergency tone played through the speakers, not the device.

by bshep 9y ago

dawnerd 9y ago

I believe they all beep because they want you to replace all the batteries. I had this happen a few months ago except it wasn't a low battery alarm. It kept yelling "FIRE FIRE" but then turning off. Of course FirstAlert apparently doesn't indicate which alarm is causing it. They say the initiating one flashes a different pattern but I didn't find one. Ended up, after getting no sleep at all, replacing all 9 of them with nests. At least then if one fails I'll know which one.

lostlogin 9y ago
This who thread had me feeling twitchy. How did any of these product designs make it to market?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  They weren't (probably still aren't) regulated enough. Manufacturers can get away with it because even if they screw up, an angry customer doesn't really affect their sales in any meaningful way.
gasbag 9y ago
Aren't Nest Protect alarms also linked? This harrowing video leads me to believe they are. It's a couple years old at this point though. (Turn your sound down, video is a poor soul trying to deactivate them.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY

lb1lf 9y ago

My smoke detectors made a boast on the packaging they featured a fool-proof low battery indication, without going into any details. I bought half a dozen of them to install in our new house years ago, thinking the nightly find-the-beeping-^+=¥€ games were finally a thing of the past. When one started beeping, I did the rounds, figuring I'd be back in bed in minutes. Well, I wasn't. Turned out the fool-proof indication was to have the normally green LED flash red instead. Did I mention that I am colour blind?

michaelmior 9y ago
Unfortunately as some who isn't colour blind and doesn't have any close friends who are, it's easy to forget about these concerns. I think attention to accessibility issues like this is one of the things that separates great designers from good ones.
- lb1lf 9y ago
  Oh, it isn't all bad - now I get to kick my wife out of bed to find the offender, instead.
mark-r 9y ago
The smoke detectors in my house are supposed to do that, but many times I've found one chirping and the light is nice and green.

macintux 9y ago

That reminded me of an iOS quirk that thankfully has since been resolved. A few years ago I used "Find my iPhone" to chase down my phone in the house, buried under some pile or another. Unfortunately I had earlier been using AirPlay to play music through remote speakers, so of course the emergency tone played through the speakers, not the device.