Qolsys IQ Panel Sensor Status And Trouble Condition Overview

Hey, guys. Hayden here again from Alarm System Store. And today we're going to be going over some troubleshooting features for the Qolsys IQ panel systems. Currently I have an IQ panel two plus. And this is actually the discontinued model. the firmware keeps up with the current model, which is the IQ panel four, which is what we have on our website so you can go check it out there. The install manual is there. If you're looking at getting one of these. Everything I'm going to cover today is covered in the manual. However the manual is like 90 pages long or something like that. So this is just kind of here to direct. You guys to the important features for troubleshooting. If you ever run into any issues with your panel. So I'm going to move the camera over here. one thing I do want to mention before we do that is since I am on an IQ two plus, the trouble conditions between the two plus and the four are identical trouble conditions. Like, they'll show up the same. However, where you view them is different depending on the panel. the IQ four actually has a home screen page that you can see those troubles on right there. this one, you have to go into the little messages section of the main screen, and that's where you'll find, basically a list of any trouble conditions that are present on the panel. So that's really the only difference, though, the troubleshooting steps and the features and tests that you can run on the system are exactly the same. So I'm gonna bring the camera over here. We're going to take a look and I'm going to show you guys where to see the trouble conditions and where you can test different aspects of the system. If you are happening to have any troubles. So I'll be right back.

All right. So here we are at the IQ panel. I'm basically just going to give a rundown of what to look for as far as trouble conditions go on the IQ panel and what you can do about them. So the first thing you want to do, anytime you believe you may have a trouble condition on your system is under the home page right here, where you have your arm and disarm symbol and you'll see a section on the right. And generally it is set to active which shows your active sensors. So, basically every sensor that is currently open or tampered or in trouble, or whatever the case might be, will show up under this active tab. And if I click all here, it does show all of the sensors for the panel and it will show the status for those. So if you ever just want to check it, you're welcome to click all there and scroll down. It will give you the name and the status of each individual device connected to your system. However, under the active tab, those are the ones that need attention basically. So as you can see here, the front door that I have, which is this door contact, it has a little broken chain link here. And basically that just means the sensor is open. I don't have a magnet that's next to this, so it is showing open. If I put a magnet to it it will show closed. But each device that you see under the active tab will have one of these symbols. And on the screen, you'll see basically the list that is shown in the IQ manual.

However, I'm going to give a rundown of what each one is and how you can resolve each trouble condition. So the first two are what I just went over. the open or closed chain link basically just means it's either open or closed. If it's broken like that, it's open. If it's closed, the center is closed. So the next two are active and idle, which you'll generally see these for motion detectors, but they are stick figures. The idle is the stick figure standing still and the active is the stick figure running. Basically it means the same thing as open or closed. It's just for a motion detectors and I think a couple other sensors. But basically if it's idle, it's good. If it's active, it means something is actively triggering that sensor. Now the following one after that is a question mark and that means the device is unreachable. So now generally you won't see this as often as you'll see an exclamation point, which I'll cover in a moment. But unreachable means the panel cannot talk to the sensor for whatever reason. generally that means it's gone out of range or, its battery has died completely, and the panel cannot talk to the sensor to figure out what's going on with it. It can't get status or anything. So anytime you see that question mark, it's a good idea to grab your sensor. you can try tampering it to see if it will connect to the panel. Try replacing the battery to see if that helps. There is a test that I'm going to do here in a moment that, is in the advanced settings of the panel. So once I cover that, that's a good way to basically check the signal strength of your devices. But moving on for now.

The next one is a tampered condition, which is a it looks like a broken cracker to me. I don't know what it's supposed to be, but it's something broken. Basically, that means that a device is tampered. And you'll see this on pretty much any wireless device or a module that generally the cover is off of. So I'm going to cause this trouble in a moment. But if I took the cover off of this door contact, it would show up as tampered because there is a button inside that has to be pushed down when this cover is on, and that tells the system that the sensor is good and it's not tampered. If that button's released, it shows a tamper. Same thing applies for, keypads or any device that you connect to this panel. Each device should have its own tamper, and if you're unsure for your specific device, check the manual for that, sensor or module or whatever it is, and it should tell you exactly what the parameters are for a tamper condition so you can resolve it from there. And the next one is basically a little loading symbol. It's a circle that spins around. that means that the device is synchronizing. Now you don't see this very often. sometimes you might see it if you your panel reboots for whatever reason, like if it finishes with an update or whatever the case might be. it has to re synchronize with those devices. And basically all that means is it's trying to reconnect to what it knows it should talk to. So if you ever see that synchronizing symbol, and you're trying to arm your panel, you might just need to give it a minute or two. but generally that doesn't stay on there for very long. It's usually pretty quick. However, if you have a continuous synchronizing symbol and it just won't clear up no matter how long you leave it, a good idea in that case is to delete and reenroll that device so that it makes that connection to the panel, and then it should resolve it.

So from there, the next one is the exclamation point that I brought up a minute ago. And that means not networked. So that's very, very similar to the unreachable symbol. I couldn't tell you exactly what the specific differences are between the two, but essentially the not networked means that the device cannot be connected to the panel. So a lot of times you'll see this when you first enroll a sensor, and you've done it by just entering the ID of the sensor and you back out to the main screen, you'll see a not network trouble there, and what you can do to resolve that is just trigger the device or tamper the device, and that will force the door contact or sensor, whatever it is, to connect to the panel. And that will clear up that network condition. the following two are very similar to the open and closed chain link. However, it's got a little symbol above it, a little loop. And basically that is telling you that the sensor is bypassed. Basically, a bypass just means that that sensor is inactive for that arming period.

So you can bypass things intentionally. using this menu here. If you click the, arm button there and then click this little arrow on the right, you can choose what sensors to bypass. So if I wanted to bypass the front door, make sure that checkmarks on are in the system. And then for that arming period, that door contact will not activate or trigger on the system in any way. Once you disarm, however, it will go back to being un bypassed, meaning it will be an active sensor. So that is only good for one arming period. But if you ever see, an open or closed symbol with that little loop above it, that just means that sensor is bypassed. Now, the only one that isn't shown on this list is the exclamation point with a diamond around it. Basically, this is a specific trouble for the powerG hardwired to wireless translators, which I did a whole video on those and that trouble condition. so I would recommend going to check that out first, but basically, if you see any of those symbols on here, that will tell you what they mean. And that way you can go about figuring out what the issue is. If you can't, you know, like I said, arm your panel or whatever the case is, if there's a sensor that's giving you trouble, you can start diagnosing it from there. So real quick, I'm going to tamper this, door contacts so that we can see that. And basically, as soon as this device has the cover off, the system will audibly announce that that device was tampered, and then it will also show that symbol over here on the right.

So, as soon as that happened, I also got a message up here in the top right as well. So when we put the cover back on this real quick. And once it is good, basically the panel will pick up that it's good, the symbol will go away for a minute. Then the panel is going to check status. And then you'll see that it went back to being open because there still is no magnet next to it. So the panel is pretty quick at picking up troubles or clearing troubles. So if you see a sensor there that's tampered or you see it's not networked or whatever the case is, as soon as that clears up, you're good to go. You can arm your panel and go about your day. However, up here in the top right, like I said, we got a message. So if you ever have any messages up here, I do recommend checking them fairly often, at least once a day just to see what's happened on your system. But at the top right, you'll see alerts and alarms. So if you click on that, basically it's just going to give you a list of all the troubles and alarm conditions or anything along those lines that have happened on the panel since you've acknowledged the troubles. So, as you can see, I tampered it twice. And basically it shows both tamper conditions here. And then if we want to clear this, all I have to do is click the acknowledge All button. And basically it's letting you know that, hey, you're deleting these troubled conditions. Everything good? Yes it is. Click okay. It clears those messages. So if you do this once a day, you will only ever see alerts and alarms that are current on your panel.

Now one other thing before I go, I want to show the testing for the sensors that you can do on this panel. So if we go into the settings here and then click on Advanced Settings, we're going to use the installer code or the dealer code. But once you get into the advanced settings you'll see system tests. So if we click on that it's going to bring up all the tests that you can run on this panel. So there's quite a few and you're always welcome to run these at any given time. But basically you have a Wi-Fi test, sensor test, cellular test, Z-Wave test. you can test the panel glass, break the door, pass communication test. There's daughter card tests. so any time you have any issues with your panel, I would recommend coming to this section and running the tests for the system, because that will at least tell you whether all of your devices, either inside this unit or, sensors are good to go. And now, one thing that I do get questions on is how to test power devices. So like this door contact is a PG9945. So it is powerG, but a lot of people will come in and just click the sensor test because that makes sense. It is a sensor and you want to test it. However, the sensor test section is for legacy sensors. So that would be if your panel has a secondary wireless card like the 319, 345 or 433MHz cards, the sensors for those will show up under the sensor test.

And now for powerG devices, you have to specifically click the power G test here. And as you can see, what it gives you is a list of all your sensors that are power G, and it give you the ID for that device. It'll tell you the name and it'll tell you the signal strength. Now, if you happen to be placing your devices, I do recommend running this test. Any time you place a device in a, a faraway location, just so that you can guarantee that you do have a good signal. But what you can do is just click run right here. And what it will do is it's just sending a signal to the sensor so that it can check the signal strength. There is one other test you can run. So you can come in here and you can click the test LED button if you want that one. All it does is it turns on the LED, makes it flash for two minutes. So you can go check and make sure that the LEDs on your devices are good under this menu. It does give you a lot more information about the sensor itself, so it'll tell you the name. It'll give you the current signal strength. As of the test, the 24 hour average signal strength, tells you when it last updated to the panel, the long ID and some other, version information that's not really relevant to anything here. But essentially this is how you test your devices. So anything power G, come in here, run a test, make sure you got a good signal. If you have a, not networked or unreachable condition on a sensor, it is a good idea to run that test. Sometimes it will pick it up. It will resolve the trouble, or it will tell you that it has a very low signal, which indicates that you may need to move the sensor or, figure out if it is near any metal, because metal will interrupt wireless frequencies.

So that's pretty much it for troubleshooting on the IQ panel. It's pretty straightforward. There's not a whole lot to it. Basically, like I said under this active section, the system is going to tell you what's going on with each sensor that it can get status from. So you can use that as a good guideline for how to resolve any troubles or, issues that you may be running into. And but if you do have any signal issues, you can go in there and run those tests, so on and so forth. But other than that, I just wanted to give a quick rundown of the panel so that those of you out there, considering the IQ panel, will be informed about what to look for whenever your system is up and running. So that's going to do it for me. basically, there's not a whole lot to the troubleshooting on this panel. Like I said, it tells you exactly what to look for under this active section. So if you have any, tampers or not network troubles or whatever the case might be, just check your panel. It'll give you the insight that you need and you can go about resolving the trouble. And so if you're on YouTube, give us a like and subscribe if you don't mind. And if you're on our website, hopefully you are finding what you're looking for. If you need any additional parts or have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. Otherwise I will catch you guys on the next one.