Kidde/Ring Smoke Detectors for Home Assistant

A HACS custom integration for Kidde/Ring smart smoke and CO detectors: the WiFi-only, hubless models that are not supported by the standard Ring integration.

Why This Integration Exists

Kidde/Ring smart smoke and CO detectors connect via WiFi and are managed through the Ring app. However, these devices don't work with the standard Ring integration because:

1. Real-time alarm state (smoke detected, CO detected) is only available via a WebSocket connection
2. The upstream library only creates WebSocket connections when a Ring Alarm hub or Beams bridge is present, but these Kidde detectors work without any hub
3. These devices may not appear in the Ring REST API at all: they are only reliably discoverable via WebSocket

This integration establishes its own WebSocket connections that bypass the hub requirement. This approach was discovered by @tsightler and validated by @jbettcher.

Supported Devices

Device	Model
Kidde/Ring Smart Smoke Alarm (wired)	Smoke only
Kidde/Ring Smart Smoke + CO Alarm (wired)	Smoke + CO
Kidde/Ring Smart Smoke + CO Alarm (battery)	Smoke + CO

Entities

Each detector exposes the following Home Assistant entities:

Binary Sensors

• Smoke: on when smoke is detected (all models)
• Carbon Monoxide: on when CO is detected (CO models only)

Sensors

• Battery: battery level percentage (all models). These detectors report a categorical battery state (full, low, and so on) rather than a true percentage, so the level is mapped from that state (full = 100%, low = 20%, none = 0%). The raw state, plus communication and tamper status, are exposed as attributes. A missing or unrecognized state reports unknown, never a fabricated number.
• CO level: carbon monoxide level in PPM (CO models only)

Events

• Test button: fires a test event when the physical test button on the detector is pressed. Use it in automations via the event entity, or listen for ring_smoke_detectors_event on the event bus.

Entities become unavailable when the WebSocket connection for their location is down, so a connection outage is never mistaken for "no smoke".

Note on test detection: Ring's API does not document the test signal. Detection uses the alarm.testing impulse and the pushToTest component observed on real hardware. If pressing the test button does not fire the event on your device, please enable debug logging (see Troubleshooting) and open an issue with the logged payloads.

Prerequisites

• Home Assistant 2024.11 or later
• HACS installed
• A Ring account with Kidde/Ring smoke detectors set up in the Ring app

Installation via HACS

1. Open HACS in your Home Assistant instance
2. Click the three dots in the top right corner and select Custom repositories
3. Paste the URL of this GitHub repository and select Integration as the category
4. Click Add
5. Find Ring Smoke Detectors in the HACS store and click Install
6. Restart Home Assistant

Manual Installation

1. Download or clone this repository
2. Copy the custom_components/ring_smoke_detectors folder into your Home Assistant config/custom_components/ directory
3. Restart Home Assistant

Setup

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration
2. Search for Ring Smoke Detectors
3. Enter your Ring email and password
4. If prompted, enter your 2FA verification code
5. Your devices will be discovered automatically

Your Ring credentials are sent directly to Ring's servers and are not stored. Only the resulting refresh token is saved, and the integration automatically handles token rotation.

How It Works

1. Authentication: OAuth token management with automatic token rotation and persistence
2. Location Discovery: Fetches all Ring locations, then probes each one via WebSocket
3. WebSocket Connection: Requests a ticket from Ring's clap/tickets endpoint and establishes a direct WebSocket connection, even without a Ring hub
4. Device Discovery: Sends DeviceInfoDocGetList requests over the WebSocket to discover devices and their current state
5. Real-time Updates: Subscribes to DataUpdate messages for live alarm state changes (smoke, CO, battery, etc.)
6. Auto-reconnect: Reconnects with exponential backoff (5s to 60s) on connection loss

Troubleshooting

Devices Not Showing Up

• Ensure your Kidde/Ring detectors are set up and online in the Ring app
• Check the Home Assistant logs for discovery messages
• Enable debug logging by adding to configuration.yaml:

  logger:
    logs:
      custom_components.ring_smoke_detectors: debug

• To share the exact device payload when reporting an issue, go to Settings > Devices & Services > Ring Smoke Detectors, open the three-dot menu, and choose Download diagnostics. Device identifiers and location data are redacted automatically.

Token Issues

The integration automatically rotates and persists refresh tokens. If Ring revokes the token (for example after a password change), Home Assistant will prompt you to re-authenticate; enter your Ring credentials again to reconnect without losing your entities.

WebSocket Connection Issues

The integration automatically reconnects with exponential backoff (5s, 10s, 20s, up to 60s). Check Home Assistant logs for connection status messages.

Credits

This integration is based on the discovery work from dgreif/ring#1674:

• @tsightler: Discovered that Kidde smoke detectors can be accessed via WebSocket even without a hub
• @jbettcher: Built the proof-of-concept that validated the WebSocket approach
• @dgreif: Creator of ring-client-api

License

MIT