Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Alerts

In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re excited to announce a brand-new addition to the “Damage & Danger” section of the SmartThings Dashboard that’s designed to protect those you love the most. 

Starting today, a new series of use cases will be available within the “Damage & Danger” category that allows you monitor and prevent the potentially deadly effects of smoke and carbon monoxide from causing harm to your family.

In order for SmartThings to monitor smoke and carbon monoxide and trigger different actions if it’s detected, you’ll need a compatible smoke or carbon monoxide detector. Here are two that we’ve tested and can recommend:

• First Alert Battery-Operated Carbon Monoxide Alarm and Smoke Detector
• First Alert Battery-Powered 3-Volt Smoke Detector

Once you’ve connected one of the above items, you can begin to customize how SmartThings will respond to these dangers. Start by tapping the prompt titled “Smoke and Carbon Monoxide,” and name the area where you’d like SmartThings to watch out for these dangers–such as “Kitchen,” or “Living Room.” Then, select the different actions that you’d like to take place if smoke or carbon monoxide is detected.

Among the different things that are possible, you can…

• Trigger your smoke and/or carbon monoxide detector to sound a loud alarm
• Receive an instant push or text message alert to anyone’s phone
• Turn on different lights to highlight an escape route for those inside (and then automatically turn these lights off once the danger is all clear)
• Automatically unlock doors to open an escape route for those inside

After you have set up SmartThings to monitor smoke and carbon monoxide, these configurations will be visible as both a tile in your Things screen, and also on your Dashboard:

This new functionality will be available in full to Android users in several weeks once we release our major Android app upgrade.

In the meantime, Android users can still connect a smoke and/or carbon monoxide detector. So long as it’s one of the two compatible devices listed above, it will show up properly in your Things screen and you can use the “Notify Me When” SmartApp to receive instant text or push notifications when smoke or carbon monoxide is detected.