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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I used to calibrate industrial gas detectors. They generally have an active air sampling path with a pump and a sensor in the gas flow path, and we would calibrate them by flooding the sensor chamber with a test gas at a known concentration. For the type of sensor you have none of those conditions exist (no controlled gas flow path and no pump) so there is essentially no way you can accurately test their response. You essentially have to trust the manufacturer to have made a good product. The one thing you can do is look for an install date and (hopefully) an expiration date, if you can inspect the back of the detector without setting off any central alarm system. If you really don’t trust the owner’s sensors, you can always buy and use your own. Just make sure you place them carefully according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

    Also, your detectors are probably combo smoke/CO, but not natural gas. You would smell the odorant in the gas long before the concentration becomes dangerous so a detector would be redundant.


  • It’s generally a good idea to wait a bit. That way you let early adopters discover and report any problems the developers missed and give the devs time to patch them. You then get the benefit of their testing and should end up with a more stable system when you eventually do upgrade.

    There is also a very small chance that someone will find a major issue that could break the update in a non-recoverable way. If you wait, that person is much less likely to be you.