SMART HOME BUTLER · LIVING ROOM
Smoke and air quality must never share a rule
One of them saves lives and can carry no conditions, no delay, and no switching off because it woke you. The other is about comfort and can be tuned freely.
Combining them is the most common mistake
Once there is an air quality sensor in the living room, the natural thought is that it also detects smoke, so why not handle both together. Natural, and dangerous.
Because you will absolutely tune the air quality rule. Restrict the hours because it is noisy at night, add conditions because of false alarms, switch it off for a while because it is irritating. Every one of those is reasonable — but if smoke is bundled in, every one of them also weakens your fire alarm.
The correct approach is two entirely separate rules. Tune the air quality one however you like, and never touch a character of the smoke one.
How the two rules differ
| The smoke rule | The air quality rule | |
|---|---|---|
| Guards against | Fire, and lives | Long-term health and comfort |
| Response time | Seconds, no buffer | Minutes, there is time to observe |
| Levels | None — one trigger, maximum | Three, escalating |
| Active hours | Always, cannot be limited | Can be limited, e.g. no night alerts |
| Extra conditions | None permitted at all | Add whatever you like |
| Alert priority | Highest, bypasses do-not-disturb | Normal |
| Can it be switched off? | No | Yes |
What the three air quality levels do
- Level one
Handled quietly
PM2.5 past 35 or a slight TVOC rise. The purifier starts on low and you are not told. Most of the time somebody is cooking and you do not need to know.
- Level two
It speaks up
PM2.5 past 75 or CO₂ past 1200. The purifier goes to high and you get a notification suggesting a window. This is the first level that interrupts you.
- Level three
Everything on
PM2.5 past 150. All ventilation to maximum with repeated alerts. Indoors this figure is rare, and it usually means there is a definite source.
- Back to normal
Standing down
Levels only release below 25, well clear of where they engaged, so the machines are not constantly cycling.
Four things it takes care of
Early fire warning
What kills in most domestic fires is smoke rather than flame. A few minutes of warning makes an enormous difference.
You will not disable it
Because the smoke rule never nuisance-alarms, you never acquire a reason to switch it off. That is the most practical benefit of separating the two.
Steadily better air
Small events are dealt with without your knowledge. Over time the average indoor air quality rises noticeably.
Quiet
Only level two and above notify. Your phone is not buzzing all day, which means you look when it finally does.
Different homes, different air thresholds
| Your situation | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical home | 35 | 75 | 150 | The general case |
| Open-plan kitchen | 45 | 90 | 170 | Cooking smoke reaches the living room; relax them to avoid constant triggering |
| Asthma or allergies | 25 | 50 | 100 | Shift the whole set down and step in earlier |
| Infants at home | 25 | 55 | 110 | Developing lungs justify being more active |
| Someone smokes | 35 | 70 | 140 | Level two must reliably trigger ventilation, since that is the main source |
What you need to have
| What it does | Category in the system | Essential? |
|---|---|---|
| Detect smoke | binary_sensor | Yes |
| Measure air quality | sensor | Yes |
| Receive alerts | notify (phone app) | Yes |
| Sound an alarm | siren or switch | Strongly advised |
| Purifier and extraction | fan or switch | Recommended |
How the whole thing works
Use the ready-made blueprints
The hub ships with 22 tested automation blueprints — think of one as a fill-in-the-blanks form. Smoke uses binary_sensor_trigger_things; the three air quality levels use greenhouse.
| Field | Smoke rule | Three air rules |
|---|---|---|
| Watches | The smoke detector | PM2.5 and CO₂ |
| Triggers on | Any detection | 35 / 75 / 150 |
| Actions | Siren, all lights, alert | Purifier, ventilation, alerts |
| Active hours | Always, cannot be set | Night alerts can be suppressed |
| Alert priority | Highest | Level one does not notify |
Just say the word
You do not have to fill in any of those four rules by hand. The WOOWTECH hub ships with HA-MCP, which lets AI connect straight into your system, build the rules, and then go back and check for itself that each one really fires before it reports back.
Prompts you can copy straight across
Every block below can be copied whole with the button on the right. Pick the one closest to what you want — you do not need all five.
Split living room smoke detection and air quality into two completely separate rules for me. Never merge them into one. On any smoke detection, sound the alarm, put every living room light on and send me the highest priority alert — and put no hours and no conditions on that rule at all. For air quality, keep it simple to start with: run the purifier when PM2.5 gets high. Find the devices yourself, and if one is missing say so rather than substituting the air quality sensor for a smoke detector.
Build me four living room rules: one for smoke, three for air quality. The two sets must be completely independent and must never be merged. The smoke rule: on any detection, at the same moment sound the siren, take every living room light to full brightness, put all extraction on, and alert me at the highest priority so it gets through do-not-disturb. That rule may have no active hours and no extra conditions — no "only when home", no "daytime only", not one. The three air rules: PM2.5 above 35 runs the purifier low and does not notify me; above 75 takes the purifier high and messages me to open a window; above 150 puts all ventilation at maximum with repeated alerts. All three release only below 25. Levels two and three may stay quiet overnight; level one never notifies anyway. Send everything as a phone notification, never as spoken audio, and use the ready-made blueprints on the hub rather than your own. When it is built, test it yourself, confirm it really fires, then tell me which devices you used and how many conditions the smoke rule ended up with.
Our kitchen is open to the living room, so cooking smoke drifts straight in. Loosen the air thresholds across the board: level one to 45, level two to 90, level three to 170. The level two window reminder will fire all through dinner, so in that stretch just ventilate and do not message me. Leave the smoke rule completely alone — same trigger, same absence of conditions, same lack of active hours. Also check where the smoke detector is mounted, and tell me if it sits too close to the hob. That would be a reason to move it, not a reason to change the rule.
Air quality level one is too sensitive — the purifier runs the whole time I am cooking. Move it from 35 to 45, and move level two to 90 with it. Keep the release point at 25 as it is. Do not touch a single thing on the smoke rule, and once you are done confirm to me that it still carries no conditions at all.
Renovation starts next week and there will be dust in the air all day, so those three air quality rules would just nag at me non-stop. Put all three on hold for now, all three of them, not only the two that alert me. Leave the smoke rule running exactly as it stands. With builders in the house I want that one more than ever. Afterwards, tell me which rules you paused and confirm the smoke one is still live. And hold on to this for me: the day I say the work is finished, remind me to switch those three back on.
Common questions
Where does the smoke detector go?
Will cooking cause constant false alarms?
Could I use only the air quality sensor?
An alarm at 3am would wake the whole building
How often do batteries need changing?
Do I have to rebuild to change an air threshold?
A month from now
You barely notice the air quality side working, because it deals with the small things by itself.
And the smoke rule — you hope it never sounds. But you will know it is there, with nothing standing in its way.