Best smart smoke detectors with local alerts

A smoke detector you can read in Home Assistant lets you do things a standalone alarm can’t: push a notification to every phone, flash every light in the house, unlock doors, shut down HVAC so it doesn’t spread smoke, and turn on cameras. Pick a detector that talks a local protocol - Z-Wave or Zigbee - so the alert is processed on your own network and doesn’t depend on the internet or a manufacturer cloud. A cloud alarm routes its alert out to a server and back before your phone buzzes, and the worst time for your internet to be down is during a fire; a Z-Wave or Zigbee detector fires straight to your local hub, so Home Assistant can react in well under a second, internet or not.

One important safety note up front: a smart detector should supplement code-compliant smoke alarms, not replace them. Local rules in most places require interconnected mains/battery alarms. Use these for automation and remote alerts, and keep your required alarms in place. (For the other big local-safety win, see Zigbee leak sensors with shutoff integration.) Also check your local code on whether you need combined smoke + carbon monoxide (CO) coverage.

Z-Wave house that wants CO coverage too: First Alert SMCO410. Zigbee house: Frient Intelligent Smoke Alarm. Matter or Zigbee: Heiman, in the radio you already run. Cheapest, and it keeps the alarms already on your ceiling: the Ecolink FireFighter listener. I haven’t run any of these four myself; the picks are based on the spec sheets, the certifications, and what I’ve read from people who own one.

Top picks

First Alert Z-Wave Smoke + CO Alarm (ZCOMBO / SMCO410)

This is the standard recommendation for Z-Wave households in North America, and it’s a combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarm - not smoke-only. The current model (SMCO410) replaces the long-running ZCOMBO, which is discontinued, so buy the SMCO410 rather than remaining ZCOMBO stock. It runs on a sealed 10-year battery on the SMCO410 (the older ZCOMBO used replaceable AA cells), pairs to any Z-Wave controller, and exposes smoke and CO alarm states to Home Assistant. It was designed for Ring Alarm but works fine with Home Assistant’s Z-Wave integration.

Caveats: it reports alarm events, not a live “air quality” stream, and being battery-powered it sleeps to save power - so it’s a notifier, not a sensor you poll. That’s normal for this class of device.

First Alert Z-Wave Smoke + CO Alarm - note that my product page there covers the second-generation ZCOMBO-G, the discontinued predecessor, rather than the current alarm. The SMCO410 named above is the one to buy.

Frient Intelligent Smoke Alarm (Zigbee)

The Frient Intelligent Smoke Alarm is a Zigbee device (not Z-Wave). It joined the Works with Home Assistant program in 2025, runs entirely locally (Local Push), and works through both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT with a Zigbee coordinator. It has an 85 dB built-in sounder and a built-in temperature sensor you can use for heat-rise automations. It’s CR123A battery powered with a multi-year battery life.

It’s a smoke (and heat) alarm - it does not detect carbon monoxide, so pair it with a separate CO alarm if you need CO coverage.

Frient Intelligent Smoke Alarm

Heiman Smart Smoke Alarm (Zigbee or Matter)

Heiman sells its smoke alarm in more than one radio, and the model suffix is what tells you which: the HS1SA-E is Zigbee 3.0, the S1-M (North America) and HS1SA-M (Europe) are Matter over Thread, and an HS1SA-Z Z-Wave Plus version also exists (the commonly listed HS1SA-Z is the 868.42 MHz European model, so check the frequency for your region). Match the suffix to the coordinator you already run; the variants will not join each other’s network. On the Matter models the market also decides the certification: the S1-M is tested to UL 217 10th Edition by Intertek (ETL) and listed by the California State Fire Marshal, while the HS1SA-M is certified to EN 14604 for Europe. Buy the one listed for your jurisdiction, because a detector that is not listed where you live may not satisfy local code. The Zigbee model pairs through ZHA/Zigbee2MQTT; the Matter model is Matter-over-Thread, so it joins via Home Assistant’s Matter integration and needs a Thread border router on your network. Either way the alert is handled locally. It is the cross-platform pick rather than the cheap one: basic smoke detection, no CO, no frills, but it reports cleanly.

Heiman Smart Smoke Alarm (Matter over Thread)

Ecolink FireFighter (FF-ZWAVE5-ECO)

There is a fourth approach that does not involve replacing a detector at all. The Ecolink FireFighter is a Z-Wave audio sensor: it listens for the standard T3 (smoke) and T4 (carbon monoxide) alarm patterns that your existing UL-listed alarms already sound, and relays that event to Home Assistant over Z-Wave JS, entirely on the local mesh. The code-required alarms you already own stay exactly where they are and keep doing their job.

That makes it the cheapest way to bring an existing interconnected alarm system into Home Assistant, and it sidesteps the question of whether a smart detector is listed for your jurisdiction, because the listed detector is the one already on your ceiling. The limitation is right there in the description: it listens to alarms rather than detecting smoke itself, so it is only as good as the detector it sits next to, and Ecolink’s instructions put it within about six inches of the alarm it listens to. Budget one per alarm you want reported.

Ecolink FireFighter FF-ZWAVE5-ECO

Integrating with Home Assistant

Once a detector is paired, you get a binary sensor (and a CO binary sensor on the First Alert). Build automations off the “on” state:

Notify every household phone and a dashboard banner.
Flash all lights red / turn everything to full brightness to aid evacuation.
Turn off HVAC and any whole-house fan so smoke isn’t circulated.
Trigger a loud media player or siren in bedrooms.

Because Z-Wave and Zigbee battery detectors sleep, test the automation by pressing the unit’s test button (which sends a real alarm event) rather than waiting to “poll” the device.

What to avoid

Skip Wi-Fi and cloud-only smart alarms if local-first matters to you, because the alert path runs through the vendor’s servers. And skip the Kidde Smart Smoke + CO Alarm specifically, at least as a Home Assistant device. It is a reasonable safety product, with wireless interconnect between units and phone notifications, and it does voice status through Alexa and Google. But there is no Apple Home support, no official Home Assistant integration and no documented public API. What exists is a community HACS component that polls Kidde’s undocumented cloud, which means the local-first setup gets nothing an internet outage cannot take away. Buy it for the safety features if you want them, not as a Home Assistant device.

Whichever you pick, keep your code-required alarms installed and add a separate CO alarm if your detector doesn’t cover CO.