My parents have a smoke detector which blinks a red LED every ten minutes or so. It’s also placed in the hallway between my room and the toilet. Because that hallway is quite short and a little bit of light still came out of my room, I eventually started just not turning on the lights in the hallway, to kind of preserve the sleepiness.
Well, eventually I walked down that hallway in darkness and was right in front of the smoke detector when it decided to blink, shortly tinting everything around me faintly red. Fucking hell, that spooked me…
Why do short flashes like that work so well in movies or shows? Like imagine an anime where they can create such an eerie moment by flsshing a few frames of something fucked up on a normal moment. I think jujutsu kaisen did it and its so cool. Instead of just showing a demon in plane sight you do it like that. Add some creepy music and youre set for a great scene.
Thank you for the correction, you’re right. I got it mixed up with the status LED that some/most(?) smoke detectors have that will periodically blink to show that it’s active.
Regardless, a smoke alarm blinking red is to be expected, and doesn’t mean that it needs to be tested. Most of them will make a loud ping to notify the user that it requires attention, as you can’t expect people to notice the blinking LED alone.
My parents have a smoke detector which blinks a red LED every ten minutes or so. It’s also placed in the hallway between my room and the toilet. Because that hallway is quite short and a little bit of light still came out of my room, I eventually started just not turning on the lights in the hallway, to kind of preserve the sleepiness.
Well, eventually I walked down that hallway in darkness and was right in front of the smoke detector when it decided to blink, shortly tinting everything around me faintly red. Fucking hell, that spooked me…
Why do short flashes like that work so well in movies or shows? Like imagine an anime where they can create such an eerie moment by flsshing a few frames of something fucked up on a normal moment. I think jujutsu kaisen did it and its so cool. Instead of just showing a demon in plane sight you do it like that. Add some creepy music and youre set for a great scene.
That mean the smoke detector need to be tested. Push the button for testing and the light, after, will be a hard green, no flashling.
No my smoke detector had an ‘operational light’. It flashed every 30 seconds or so, so you knew it didn’t have a dead CPU or so.
Not if it is a photoelectric smoke detector, which is the only type you should have unless you got a good reason for ionisation smoke detector.
The blinking is the smoke detector checking for smoke particles.photoelectric detectors use infrared LEDs. and they are inside the detector, shielded so stray light will not cause any problems.
Any red LED you see on a smoke detector is for statuses, not detecting
Thank you for the correction, you’re right. I got it mixed up with the status LED that some/most(?) smoke detectors have that will periodically blink to show that it’s active.
Regardless, a smoke alarm blinking red is to be expected, and doesn’t mean that it needs to be tested. Most of them will make a loud ping to notify the user that it requires attention, as you can’t expect people to notice the blinking LED alone.
it would be nice if there were smoke detectors that didn’t have flashing lights during normal operation.
Well, the problem with that is that a completely dead smoke detector does also not blink
perhaps a steady faint green glow?