33. The environmental condition detector of claim 31 wherein the control circuitry terminates said audible tonal pattern for a prescribed time period upon reception by the speech recognition circuitry, during prescribed periods of audible tonal pattern silence, of audible verbal commands.
31. An environmental condition detector receiving audible verbal commands and electronic speech recognition to test the functionality of the detector comprising: a housing; at least one sensor that detects an indoor presence of an environmental condition in the ambient vicinity of the detector; control circuitry that activates an audio output transducer to emit an alarm having an audible tonal pattern for the duration of the detection of said environmental condition; speech recognition circuitry that receives and electronically recognizes said audible verbal commands and thereby initiating at least one diagnostic test of at least one electronic component of said environmental condition detector, wherein a first received and recognized verbal command prepares the detector to receive and recognize at least a second verbal command; after reception and recognition of the first verbal command, if a second verbal command is not received and recognized within preset time interval, the detector re-enters a waiting mode to receive a first verbal command; an electronic memory in which the user can record at least one verbal command for user dependent speech recognition; the at least one sensor comprises at least one of a smoke sensor, a fire sensor, a carbon monoxide sensor, a heat sensor, or a motion sensor; a power source selected from the group including a battery, a non-battery power supply, and a non-battery power supply with a back-up power supply; the housing contains at least the sensor, the control circuitry, and the audio output transducer; and the detector is independent of a centrally monitored system.