Programming Your Home

Networked Smoke Detectors

Smoke detectors save lives and can help minimize property damage, but what happens when the alarm goes off when nobody is home? If you know what you’re doing, you can hook directly into the onboard electronics of the smoke detector to measure the voltage change when the alarm goes off, but doing so will probably void your detector’s warranty. It could also put the lives of those who depend on its life-saving functionality at risk if the device is improperly modified. Instead of soldering directly onto the smoke detector’s electronics, obtain an Electret microphone breakout board and use your Arduino and XBee skills to hook up, calibrate, and monitor the microphone input for the audio levels attained when the smoke detector’s ...