Smoke Detector Teardown Videos

[Deodand2014]

Big Clive posted a teardown of a cheap smoke detector making use of what he calls the 'ubiquitous 8-pin chip' that was the subject of EEVBlog #1132. The general conclusion was that you should not trust your life to it as there is no low battery warning.



He has done two other teardowns over the last three years.





This led me to go looking around on YouTube and I found two others.

One by Julian Ilett, which was apparently the preview to a review that never happened.



And this one from Scotland complete with a test against a 'name brand' detector. Like the one Big Clive tore down it makes use of an 8-pin chip as the controller, and is not something you'd trust your life to.

[Deodand2014]

Still looking for some more teardowns, strangely there don't seem to be that many out there. Lots of videos on hacking them in various ways and by people who collect them. The teardowns of the cheap Chinese detectors, the two by Big Clive and the one by David McLuckie (The last of the set I posted which compares a 'no name' unit against a Kiddie branded unit.) are the real eye openers, all three use the same 'generic' cover design, but the circuitry is completely different in each.

While not a teardown video this one shows AliExpress purchased smoke detectors failing to go off even when smoke is blown directly into the unit. Disturbingly the test button works perfectly. This is similar behaviour to the one in the David McLuckie video.



What is not seen is what type of circuit board is being used.

[Deodand2014]

I've not found any more fire alarm teardowns (Which is a real surprise given how common they are.). But here are some of the more interesting hacks of smoke alarms (Which is to say they involve something other than adding the ability to send a text message... ) I've found.

These two involve using the alarm to monitor something other than smoke.





The last of them involves adding functionality in a non 'Internet-of-Things' way



For anyone who is interested the video below covers the delay circuit used in the video above.

[Deodand2014]

Just located another video showing ebay/AliExpress smoke alarms that seem to be designed only to work if you press the test button...

[Deodand2014]

Big Clive has torn down a fire alarm using a different principle of operation to detect heat directly. Interesting circuit board too.

[rayfranco]

Smoke Alarm Teardowns are at:

https://smokealarmexpert.com

more on the way.