I think I read that 90%, possibly 95% or more of fire alarms are false alarms, and that emergency services are frequently called on false automatic alarms.

a "smart house" innovation that might get around the false alarms is to have an imager in every room that notices if there is an actual conflagration.

Improving that could be location sensors that send a person's camera-roomba to the area for higher quality verification of an actual problem. This might also benefit firefighters as they would know more exactly where the trouble was.
-- beanangel, Jun 28 2017

Fire is fast relative to our time scale.
-- wjt, Jun 29 2017


What if something is smoldering or burning in a hidden place, enough to set off the smoke detector, but without visible flames? Then it gets marked as a false alarm until it's big enough to be seen, by which point it could be too late.
-- notexactly, Jun 29 2017


What if it's the lithium-ion battery in the camera-roomba that catches fire ?
-- 8th of 7, Jun 30 2017



random, halfbakery