Zigbee + Matter/Thread Smart Smoke Alarm & Carbon Monoxide Detector | Project Nebula

Innovation & Firmware Discussion Innovation Projects
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Hey everyone!

Welcome to Project Nebula, our community development thread for the Zigbee + Matter/Thread Smart Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Alarm.

As with our other community projects, this thread will be the main place to follow development, share feedback, ask questions, and help shape the product as it moves from idea to reality.

I’ll keep this first post updated so it’s easy to see where things stand without having to dig through the full thread.

Project Team

I’ll be leading the project from Inovelli’s side and will be the main point of contact for overall product direction, requirements, timeline, and manufacturer coordination.

If you’re not sure who to tag, just tag me and I’ll get it to the right person.

Project Overview

Project: Nebula
Product: Zigbee + Matter/Thread Smart Smoke Alarm & Carbon Monoxide Detector
Protocol: Zigbee + Matter over Thread
Current Stage: Concept / Market Research
Current Goal: Gather community feedback and receive initial manufacturer timeline
Target Production: Tentatively Q3 (pending official timeline)

What We’re Building

Project Nebula is our attempt at building a smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarm that fits naturally into modern smart homes while still keeping life safety as the top priority.

One of the biggest reasons we’re exploring this product is because there has been a real gap in the market since the Google Nest Protect was discontinued. A lot of people loved that product, including Eric, and there really hasn’t been a clear replacement that offers the same kind of smart home appeal while also fitting well into enthusiast ecosystems.

Our goal is to create a smoke alarm and CO detector that combines strong core safety functionality with smart home integration, useful alerts, and thoughtful features that actually make sense in day-to-day use.

Current Design

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design subject to change

Core Requirements

These are the major requirements we’re currently designing around. As always, these may evolve as we move through engineering, feasibility review, and testing.

Hardware

  • Smoke Detection

  • Carbon Monoxide Detection

  • Zigbee + Matter over Thread Connectivity

  • AC Powered with Battery Backup

  • Backup Battery Preference: AA/AAA batteries if possible

  • Audible Alarm

  • Status / Notification LED Ring

  • Physical Test / Silence Control

  • Replaceable / Quick-Connect Mounting Base or Harness

  • mmWave Presence Sensing

  • Potential Additional Ambient / Safety Sensors (depending on feasibility)

Software / Smart Features

  • Smoke Alarm Status

  • Carbon Monoxide Alarm Status

  • Battery Status Reporting

  • Device Health / Fault Notifications

  • Test / Silence Status

  • mmWave Presence Reporting

  • Automation Triggers Based on Alarm State

  • OTA Firmware Updates

  • LED Configuration

  • Local Alarm / Event History

  • Safety-Oriented Smart Features

  • Matter Support for Alarm Functionality

What We’re Still Exploring

These are some of the areas we’re actively working through right now:

  • Interconnect Strategy: wired, wireless, or both

  • Additional feature ideas from the community

  • Best use cases for mmWave in a life-safety product

  • What smart features are truly useful vs. just “nice to have”

  • Final feasibility, architecture, and project timeline from the manufacturer

This is the part where your feedback can really help shape the direction of the project.

Community Feedback

This is the biggest thing we need right now.

We’d love to hear:

  • Is this a product you would actually want?

  • What features would be most important to you?

  • Are there any ideas or use cases you think we should explore?

  • What would make this stand out as a true replacement for products like Nest Protect?

Whether your feedback is about hardware, software, installation, automations, safety, or design, we want to hear it.

As always, not every idea will make Version 1, but community feedback often helps us uncover use cases and priorities we may not have considered.

Timeline

We are still waiting on the official timeline from the manufacturer, so I don’t want to post dates yet that may immediately change.

For now, the expected project flow looks like this:

Stage Status
Concept / Market Research In Progress
Community Feedback In Progress
Manufacturer Feasibility Review In Progress
Initial Timeline Release Pending
Industrial Design Upcoming
Engineering / Development Upcoming
Testing / Validation Upcoming
Certification Upcoming
Production Upcoming

Current Focus: We’re currently gathering community feedback while the manufacturer reviews our documents and works on the initial timeline.

Project Updates

I’ll post updates here as there’s meaningful progress to share.

Alright, let’s build this thing!

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Awesome! Since this is so early in design phase, I’ll dump all my thoughts in. :slight_smile:

I believe the UL certification process will definitely take more time than your other products, but this could be really awesome. As a suggestion, for the smoke detection, please consider putting both ionization and photoelectric sensors in it. For some reason there aren’t many / any smoke/CO combo detectors that have both kinds of smoke detectors.

For interconnect, I’d guess that UL certification will be easier if it is wired, but having wired + wireless so they know which one actually set of the alarm) would be good.

I believe you’ll need to have two batteries, one non-replaceable one with a 10y maximum life for the detection capability, and a separate battery for the smart capabilities.

I can see uses for the mmWave sensor, but I also suspect it will be constrained because a lot of smoke detectors aren’t in an optimal location for sensing (right next to the door to the room, pointing straight down or sideways close to the ceiling). If the sensor could be aimed separately from detector placement that would help a lot.

If the current UL rules mean the Path Light feature the Nest Protects had can’t be used, please at least allow tuning the LED brightness to the minimum alllowable.

If allowed, on the Matter version, please allow it to delay battery chirping during a human sleep hour. 2am chirps really suck.

If monthly automatic self-testing is allowed (like the Nest Protect), please include that, but have some Zigbee / matter value that shows seconds to next test (so we can set HA alerts more than a minute before it’s going to go off and get the dog out so he doesn’t loose his mind every month).

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First off - great name and excellent product idea filling a real hole. I just replaced 6x smoke detectors and it feels bad when the only smart option is the Ring one.

Having just made this purchase, here’s my thoughts:

  • Hardwired interconnect must be at least an option - a life threatening emergency is not a real great time to figure out the Zigbee radio is flaky.
  • This should be a great smoke/co detector with great smarts bolted on - not a great smart home product with great smoke/CO detection bolted on. A software hang in whatever RTOS is running on this thing shouldn’t leave the users vulnerable.
  • Would love mmwave presence sensing if it can encompass a wide enough “cone” to be useful
  • Intercom/speaker feature could be cool but absolutely not essential.
  • I’m preferential to hardwired + 10yr lithium battery, but I recognize the AA/AAA is nice too
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Many states and local jurisdictions require hardwired interconnects for new construction or any remodels on existing construction. As someone with existing hardwired interconnects, I would not even consider a solution if it was missing that functionality.

I’ll also throw in the feature that it should talk. It’s so much more useful when it audibly screams Fire vs Carbon Monoxide and is much better at waking people up than the loud cryptic siren.

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Agree that hardwired is basically a requirement at this point, although I think many states allow for wireless interconnect. However, for a life-saving safety product I would never purchase an interconnected system that didn’t offer a wired option. Toward this, I want to second the previous comment sentiment that these need to first be high-quality smoke & CO detectors with the smart home features as an added bonus.

Regarding batteries, I think all smoke detectors now have a finite lifespan of 10 years. Having to replace batteries when they could just come with a 10-year backup battery seems a little silly.

As you look into this more I suspect that to create a single product that meets code requirements in all 50 states will heavily constrain the design regarding many of these options.

I recently had FirstAlert smoke & CO detectors installed and really like the voice alerts. They can be labeled with a predefined set of room names which the smoke detector will say when it goes off. However, when the other alarms go off via the interconnect wire signal they aren’t able to say which room triggered the home alarm. Having the interconnect wire somehow also transmit the source room of the activation to the other alarms in the house would be awesome.

Also, why no Z-wave?

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Love this!

If it has the same features as the Nest + Inovelli smarts, I’m all in! :smiley:

Need a silence button on the device.

Would be nice if a smart switch’s config button or tap configuration could also silence it.

Should have a speaker to speak instead of just beeping.

Mains power would be an issue for me in my kitchen - just did a full reno and never thought of adding a mains connector for smoke alarm! :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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I’m surprised you have a smoke detector in the kitchen. It’s generally recommended against (even with gas appliances) because of possibility of lots of false alarms.