Make a dumb smoke detector smart—and save!

In my old house, every time I used the range, the smoke alarms would trigger. I’d have to grab a stool and air out the alarm or just disconnect it entirely. It made me want to microwave everything! Smart smoke alarms today, like the Nest Protect, allow you to disable nuisance alarms from your phone. Unfortunately, the Nest Protect costs about $120. I looked for something cheaper and found the Roost smart battery, a 9-volt with a brain, which cost about $35 on getroost.com. Intrigued, I purchased a few and tested them in the homeLAB. Installation is as simple as putting a battery in a smoke alarm. To connect your smartphone to the battery, you need to download the Roost app (available on Android and iPhone) and follow the prompts. Setup took a little less than five minutes, thanks to the app’s simple, intuitive design. I did a few simple tests on the smoke alarm, and the batteries passed every test. Once the alarm triggered, a notification was quickly sent to my tablet. I had the option of snoozing the alarm or taking action. Roost provides a button to call the authorities in a real emergency. It has a few other handy features, like allowing friends and family to monitor the alarm, and it reports the status of the battery life. Two features it doesn’t have are simultaneous alarms on non-hardwired smoke detectors and remote testing. Those features put it up to about par with the Nest. But even without them, the Roost smart battery is a great little device at a reasonable price.