Review on 🏠 First Alert Onelink Safe & Sound - Smart Hardwired Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Detector and Premium Home Speaker featuring Amazon Alexa by Randy Basque

I worked with First Alert for three weeks to get this thing up and running but it had problems straight away. I have edited this review over time. It all started with a star. I paid $249.99 for this thing and now less than a month later it's $199. As far as I can tell, it worked for a few days with no problems. Alexa sounded great. We had no fires or carbon monoxide, but the unit passed the test normally. One night the night light turned on by itself. Sucker - bright white light. and it is installed in the bedroom. My wife will not sleep in the room. I have to send one or the other back. I can go into the Onelink app on my iPhone and reset it to go back to its soft, muted light green color. After five minutes, the night light switches on again with 100% brightness. I'll call the manufacturer and we'll go through some troubleshooting steps. You mention something called the Apple Homekit. that comes with the iPhone, but I've never used it. So I set about setting it up. In short, Apple Homekit says I need to set up the device and use Onelink Home to do that. I go to Onelink Home and he says he is satisfied and everything is fine. Everything is not ok as the night light turns on by itself. Sometimes the Onelink app knows IoT is on and sometimes it doesn't. When Onelink knows night mode is on, I just turn the switch off and everything is fine for about 5 minutes. If the Onelink app doesn't know the night light is on, I can play around with the brightness slider and choose my own color. There are three sliders to play with: Nightlight On, AutoBrightness, and then a manual brightness slider that disappears when Auto Brightness is enabled. The app also has its own color wheel so you can choose a beautiful shade. All four controls are seriously messed up. I also tried removing the iPhone completely and installing it with a fresh Android S9 but that didn't work so I went back to the iPhone and the night light that won't turn off. Therefore, I agreed to return the device and decided to order a replacement, as I suspect the device itself. Of course, about an hour after I arrange a return, First Alert tells me that they want to send me a new unit. OK, I'll tell you. At the moment I see several possibilities: 1) My iPhone, which is managed by my employer, has a problem with these two apps being fully compatible with each other. The control app doesn't seem to have a problem. Worst case I can remove it temporarily. 2) Something within range of my house is interfering with this device's 2.4GHz signal. I am now a Newtork engineer by trade. I have many devices installed at home including a proper firewall and multiple SSIDs. More on SSID later. 3) I have a defective device. It happens. 4) The integration between Apple Homekit and Onelink Home is severely disrupted. Possibly as a result of the iOS 11.4.1 code or the Onlelink code. 5) QA really missed something. While waiting, I deleted it from my Apple iPhone and tried installing the app on my wife's Android. Bad luck. So, First Alert is sleeping with me with a new device. Connect and copy. The same thing happens. Amazon replacement comes next day. We'll spend a few more days debugging. I get a call from a support manager and a couple of engineers trying to resolve the issue. You have a solution that needs to be flown. For the sake of simplicity, I'll remove the new device from my network and put it on the SSID provided by my ISP. The device gets a firmware update and works like a champ. For fun I change it back to my SSID and everything works again. I'll take the original device and plug it in to see what happens. My firewall doesn't have any weird explicit rules, but it blocks incoming traffic statelessly. I don't have details on the software fix but I've been told it's a unique set of circumstances and in a simple environment a firmware update should work just fine. If not give them a call so I can live with the device on the provider's SSID, but I'd rather have it on mine. Many thanks to Laurie, Support Manager, and Timothy and Mike, Engineers. When they realized they had a problem, they did their best for me. First Alert said I could keep the replacement unit. My only real complaint is that the device currently only works on 2.4GHz WiFi. I would think dual radio would be a good option but I think 2.4GHz is still more common than 5.0GHz. If you have multiple 2.4GHz SSIDs, your phone or tablet may switch from one SSID to another and you need to switch back to the other SSID to control the device. It seems that the device doesn't tell you what SSID it's using, except when you set it up for the first time.