Qolsys IQ Panel Wireless Alarm System Introduction: Install Wizard Tutorial and System Overview

Hey, guys. Hayden here again from Alarm System Store. And today we're going to be going over the horses IQ panels. So this one I have in front of me is an IQ two plus. What is for sale currently is the IQ panel four. So it is the next model in the series. But the IQ two plus is very similar especially the UI. It's almost identical. the main difference is more hardware. So I'm a real quick just cover what the calls this IQ panel is. this is a self-contained tablet alarm system. So this unit right here, this tablet is an alarm system. it is an all wireless system that, actually has multiple different wireless cards that you can use with it by default, all IQ panels are going to have a power G card, and power G is DC's newest, wireless setup and is by far the best you can get right now unless you, you know, spend big money on high quality stuff. But, when it comes to just like normal alarm system sensors, power G blows everything else out of the water, but in addition to the power G card that you get with these, you can pick a legacy wireless card so that they connect to other types of sensors as well. there's a 319 version and that is actually used for the closest sensors, as well as old inner logic sensors. And I think one other brand, I can't remember what it is, but, the next in line up is the 345MHz sensors, and that works with Honeywell sensors and two gig sensors and this panel in particular is a 345.

So I have some Honeywell wireless sensors that we're going to be in here in a few minutes. but the last additional wireless card you can get is 433MHz, which is DC's legacy stuff. so I'm sure some of you have experienced some of the older wireless. And if you have a system that you're looking to replace that has that old wireless, looking at the IQ panel is going to be a must for you, because not only will you be able to keep all your wireless sensors, you'll be able to swap them out with power G as time goes on and if those sensors go out or whatever the case may be. And since power is the higher quality, ideally once you install those the last you just as long, if not longer than the current legacy sensors that you have. now this system does have some hard wired translators, and we will get into that in later videos. But basically, to start, it's just an all wireless alarm system with up to two wireless cards in it. this does have a Z-Wave card as well. And in a low income communicator built in. So, this antenna right here is for the cellular portion of the alarm, iconic communicator. And it also has Wi-Fi connect ability so that you can have IP backup as well. so real quick, I'm just going to run through this opening installation wizard the system runs you through as soon as you turn the panel on, this is what you're going to see, and it's going to walk you through everything you need to do to get your initial setup going. Now, there's a lot we can change once that's done. But to start, like I said, it pretty much just walks you through it.

And that's why this thing is so incredibly easy to program. So, I really just want to bring more attention to this because it does look pricey when you look at it, but you are getting a lot in this tiny little package. Like I said, this system alone, it's got a seven inch touchscreen. It's got a camera built in, it has a siren built into it, or speakers so that it can enunciate siren sounds. It's got two wireless cards, a cellular and Wi-Fi communicator and a Z-Wave card, as well as its own built in backup battery. So you are getting a lot for the money. so let's get started on this installation wizard. And as we go on, I'm going to evolve this, solar system. I'm going to put some sensors on it. I'm going to show you how to, add Z-Wave. I'm going to connect it to alarm.com, I'm going to get everything going, and I'm going to show you guys basically what all you can do with these panels. And ideally I will be upgrading to an IQ 4 at some point. But for now we're just going to stick to the IQ two plus because it is very similar.

So anyway, when you first started up it does take a couple minutes to boot. But once it does it'll say welcome and get started using our easy installation wizard so you can choose what language you want to use. there's plenty in there, but I only speak English, so that's what we're going with. so basically just click start and it says please make sure the panel is plugged in before proceeding so you can actually remove the, the power to the system pretty easily. And that can be really handy if you're enrolling sensors because you can walk around, keep this with you, and enroll sensors without having to run back and forth from the sensor to trip it, and going back to the panel to enroll it and get the next one, get one, set up all the stuff like that so it makes it pretty handy as a simple wireless setup. Anyway, so we'll click start, and the first thing it's going to ask you to do is connect it to your Wi-Fi. Now this is pretty important. If you have Wi-Fi, you're definitely going to want to connect it up because after that you connect the Wi-Fi to the system it's going to do its initial updates. So depending on how old the panel is, you might have updates available. But as long as it's connected, the Wi-Fi, it will auto update as they are pushed through from classes. So basically, as you can see here, I actually have an IQ, Wi-Fi, tab set up or a IK Wi-Fi wireless network setup and that is another unit that we're going to get into here in the near future. But that's the IC, Wi-Fi six. It's pretty cool. It actually has, three different, wireless signals that it puts out. And the security one is only four alarm devices or, things from alarm.com cancers, you know, whatever it might be. And it prioritizes the connection to those devices so that you never, so that you get the best quality internet to your IC panel and cameras, for example, that you can.

So anyway, I'm going to connect this up real quick, and then I'll show you what happens when you're done. So once you get your Wi-Fi connected it is going to check the system. Basically it tries to send a signal out using cellular as well as Wi-Fi. Now 99% of the time this is going to fail if you're doing self installation, because not only is this not connected to anything, the communicator is not active, so it doesn't know where to report to and it's just going to fail so basically disregard this section. unless your system is already activated, then this test can be used to actually check your Wi-Fi. And so so anyway, just press Skip whenever that's done. And then what it's doing is an actual, system like component check. So as you saw there, it was checking for AC check and battery and checking the Z-Wave card power card, and it just goes through each, attachment that is in this IQ panel to make sure everything is working the way it's supposed to and check the cellular card there. And now it is downloading, any settings that you might have in the cloud. So that could be anything from courses, like I said, firmware updates. Or if you do have a system activated and or the system activated and you're redoing this installation wizard for some reason, any settings that you've previously saved it will bring them here so system settings downloaded, click next. And then what else are you ready to add sensors. So at this point you can just straight up start adding all of your wireless zones and get it all set up. So we're going to do that with ours. And then we'll go so so as unpacked sensors that came with the system and laid them within easy reach.

So we got them here. Door contact and a motion is what we're going to add. So click start. So searching for sensors. So open and close your sensor or open the case to trigger the device. Basically each sensor doesn't matter what brand whatever. If you check the manual it will tell you how to enroll these devices. normally any legacy stuff is really easy you just take a magnet to it and it picks it up. With things like power G sensors. Those are a little bit trickier, they have pretty high level encryption so they all have a very specific enrollment method. Whatever that enrollment method is, use it and it'll prompt this. And as you can see, we have our, serial number for the device here. And you can check it up here and it shows correct. So we're good. And then it asks you what kind of sensor that is. So by default it has it's a door window because it's pretty sure that's what it is. But if you want to set it up with something else, you can. And that is because this particular sensor is one that has an auxiliary terminal hookup for it. So some sensors come with that function. And basically if you enroll them on a courses, you have to enroll both the green switch for this device and the OCS input for this device separately. So it'll look like two different zones, but they're talking to the same sensor. But anyway, we're not going to cover too much of that in this video, but we got it enrolled here. I'm going to go ahead and set that down. It is a door or window contact. And then it. As for sensor group. Now if you're familiar with programing alarm systems, sensor group is zone definition. So this entry right here determines how this sensor is going to react no matter what happens. So entry exit that's going to be your normal delay setup.

So if you want a delay when you open that door to come in and disarm, you'll pick that there is a normal and a long delay. And both of those are adjustable. and we will go over that before this video is over. But we're not there yet, so I'm just going to run through these. There's instant parameters. so like that would be what you would use for a window or a door that you don't want a delay on. you set it for an interior door. There's a way instant follower delay. Now, some of these, they sound weird, but basically, you can check them all out in the manual for the classes. We have the PDF on the product page on our site. It'll tell you what all these mean. But for the most part, these top ones here are what you're going to stick with. Unless you're doing something special. we do want a delay on that. So we're going to leave that as ten entry exit normal delay. And this loop function that is specific to Honeywell stuff. So you won't see that on every sensor that you see. But basically Honeywell uses loops to determine what part of the sensor, it's going to be talking to. So like I said, this one has that OCS input. So that OCS input has a Toe loop as well as the read switch has its own loop. So you pick the loop that you're trying to watch. And that's what, you know, determines how it works. Check the manual for the sensor to see what loop it is or what loop you want to use. I believe it's loop two that goes to the read switch. So that's what we're going to set it for. and right here says sensor name.

Now it gives you a list of pre-made names. There's a lot and all of these the same or the, the system will announce it has a very, very good text to speech. Set up so you can type pretty much whatever you want in here under custom description, and it will do its best to say whatever that is. So for now, I'm just going to set it as the front door, wherever it went. And we'll leave it at that. But anyway, just know that you can type in your own custom descriptions, and as long as it's something the panel can read, which it most likely will be able to, it will announce it. So anyway, there is a chime as well on top of the voice functions, so you can actually change the sound of the chime for each sensor below that is voice prompts, so you can either turn them on or off for each sensor. So if you didn't want to hear about your, you know, kitchen door being opened every time you come in here, turn voice prompts off, it won't announce it anymore. You might also want to turn off chime in that way, you know it just doesn't do anything, but it will still show up on the panel is open if you need to know. and then the source right here, it's asking what wireless card you're using. So like I said, this one has a three 45MHz card. That's how I can use these Honeywell sensors.

And that's what it set up as security RF 345. So that's just talking about the wireless connection to this sensor. So once you've done click save. And now we have a new sensor. And when you're in the install wizard it's just going to bring you back to the auto roll successfully. It's going to let you know that you enrolled as a sensor successfully. And you can move on to the next one. So with this motion, same sort of thing. to trigger a motion can either open it up or you can walk in front of it, depending on what model it is. I think the battery might be dead in this one. All right. So I didn't have battery issue, but I pulled out the battery. Just stuck it back in. Just enough to get it enrolled. and all I had to do was walk in front of it, and it triggered this to attach to the panel. So, like I said, some of them are going to be like that where it's just really easy. You just walk in front of the motion. Some of them, you got to do something special, but check the manual for your sensor to find out exactly how to get it enrolled now.

Anyway, again, it's going to pop up with the sensor ID, so you can check here on the back 0959976. And that matches. So we are good to go. And now it's going to ask what type of sensor it is. So with this one we're going to pick motion because it's a motion sensor. Now as you can see both the sensor name and the sensor group automatically changed. So this sensor group depending on what type of sensor you chose, shows a very specific layout. groups or zone definitions for that type of sensor. So you have a way instant motion state instant motion delay or stay delay motion a way delay. there's quite a few in here and they are very literal. So like a way instant motion. That means that if the panel is set to a away, the motion is set to instant. So if you're looking for a very typical, armed stay, the motion is turned off. But in away mode the motion is activated. You're going to go with that first one. If you need a delay you just go to a way delay motion. And that means if that motion is tripped it's going to trigger a delay anyway. Pick whichever group you want it to to operate under. And then this one also has loops. But since it's just a motion only, it's just loop one. There's no extra set ups, but the option still shows. And then over here it popped up with my motion detector as the sensor name, and it gave me a whole entirely new list of, motion sensor names so that you can pick one of those.

Or again, if you want to do a custom description, you are more than welcome to now. There is no chime setup for this. You can turn it on if you want to, but most people just leave motion chimes off because you don't want the sensor going off every time you walk in front of it. You know what I mean? Like, that's not only going to wear your battery down, but it's going to get quite annoying because every time you walk in front of it, panel is going to say the motion detector activated, you know, whatever. So you don't want to hear that all day anyway. You can set up chime type and voice prompts forward if you want. It shows the source, which is 345 and that is a Honeywell. So that's correct. Click save are added successfully. And now we're done adding sensors so we can type in. Or we can click on View Sensor List to see what we've added. We've added a front door and a motion detector. If you need to go back to add more, you click Add New.

If not, just click next motion detector for motion detector for motion detector for motion detector for detector, for motion detector. Strong. Now sometimes it freaks out like that. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong. I'll be honest detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong motion detector. Strong. So as you know, sometimes it freaks out like that. And that's because every signal it's getting from or sending to that motion is triggering that signal strength rating. So it had a poor signal to begin with. But that's because it was like right next to the thing. Sometimes if wireless devices are too close to each other, they won't communicate. So I moved it away. We have a strong signal now, as you heard about 30 times, but essentially, like I said, every time that motion is sending out a signal. So when I moved it, when my hand was in the way, if it saw anything and triggered that motion, it's going to trigger that signal reading on this page.

So if you haven't guessed, this page is for signal testing. So at this point you can go take your sensors, attach them wherever they're actually going to be located in your home. And if you stay on this page it might be a little bit annoying, but it will tell you what your signal strength is to each of those sensors. So the door contact, there's no signal yet, but we can trigger one as long as the battery is not dead. By opening and closing the sensor. There we go. Strong front door. Strong front door. Strong. So because I tripped it multiple times, you got multiple signals. So it's strong. And we know that now. Anyway, once you get done placing all your devices making sure your signal is strong, most likely it will be. This thing has a quarter mile of range with power G, and even on the legacy cards, they have boosted, wireless signals for the IQ panel so it can pick up those sensors farther away as well. I don't have actual, specific distances for those, but you can use this page right here to see how far away you can get with it if you wanted to.

Anyway, once you're done, just click next and these systems have a built in glass break for them. So basically, it has both a speaker and a microphone built into this device. And that microphone can be turned on to enable a glass break detector in the panel itself. So if you have those facing towards a wall that has glass on it, you can turn this on and it will watch that wall for for glass breaking it's a pretty cool feature, but one thing to note is that it is only active when the system is armed in away mode. So this is not a glass break that will be active at all times. It is only whenever it's in away mode. If you need glass breaks for at all times, then you're going to want to get an actual glass break sensor in and enroll it. Anyway, we are going to enroll that panel glass break and it successfully enable it because it's a pretty important feature. So click next. Now if you have Z-Wave devices that you would like to enroll, you can do so here. I don't have any with me right at the moment. And we're going to get into Z-Wave stuff in a in a future video, but if you have them ready, you can add them. Now you just click start and do that. You'll follow the same procedure that we did for enrolling the regular sensors. Click Skip if you don't want to do it. Now you compare this to Bluetooth, and that means it pairs up with your phone so that if your phone Bluetooth is turned on and you come within a certain radius of this system, I believe it's about 50ft of the panel.

it will automatically disarm the system. So in theory, let's say you're bringing home groceries from the store. Your hands are full. You can't enter your code. So you set this up to pair to Bluetooth. And that way if you're walking up, you got arms full of groceries. It's already disarmed the system by the time you get to your front door and you don't have to worry about anything. I don't particularly care for this feature, but if you want to use it, you're more than welcome to. I would definitely suggest testing it though, to make sure that it works the way you want it to. So we're going to go ahead and click next. And it brings us to IQ remotes. So since this is a touchscreen if you want additional touch screens you can buy IQ remotes. Those are the touchscreen additional keypads for this system. They connect over Wi-Fi. And at this section right here, if you have one you can pair it. So as long as you have both devices connected to Wi-Fi, you click pair. It will look for it and get them talking. That way you have an additional touch screen for your glasses.

We don't have one, so I'm going to skip. Now you can add additional users. So by default you're going to have three users. In here you're going to have a master code a dress code and an installer code. Technically there's a fourth one, but we'll get into that later. So if you want to change any of these, you can do so here.

Or if you want to add a new code you just click Add New and you can type in a name for it. Type in the user code. You can type in what type of code it's going to be, whether it's a user, guest code, blah blah blah, and then click and user and then you're done. These are really simple to mess with.

I'm going to leave all that. Everything is default for now because I do want to show you guys how, like if you're just starting fresh, I want to show you guys all the codes there that are built in here. so we're just going to skip this section, but after that it's going to bring you to contact info.

So this is actually for your alarm system company. so I have our information plugged in here, from the stores information and I will say this is actually pretty important. If you don't fill this out, you'll have to do it later. But you cannot get into actual installation settings on the device without putting this info in. So even if you just fill it with whatever, just make sure something is in each blank and then set and then save it so that it thinks you've done this step.

If you need to edit it, there's an edit button anyway, click Skip. Now as I'm going to ask if you want to check for updates. So like I said, if you have your Wi-Fi connected it's going to check for updates. using that. So if you want to click start I already have this updated, so I'm not going to do that, but click Skip to go past it.

Now this QR code is for alarm.com. So if you are planning to use alarm.com service with this device, you're more than welcome to scan this QR code. All it does though is it takes you to alarm dot coms app on your phone so that you can download it. It doesn't activate your service, it doesn't have anything to do with your specific service.

This is just a link to the app. So you can download the app. And if you're getting alarm.com, then just let us know. If you have service with us, we'll get you activated. You can start using it anyway. We're skipping this now. Congratulations! Your system is set up and ready to use. So of course this is really cool because I got videos in here.

So I'm not going to watch this video. But basically you click on that and it's going to give you an overview of your panel over here. If you choose, three bars, it gives you a rundown of how far we've made it in the install wizard. Questions actually gives you a bunch of additional videos to so and these videos are available at all times from the system.

You just look them up and anything that you need, if it's in those videos, you can watch and figure it out. So we're not going to watch any of those today. So I'm just going to click exit. And basically all it's going to do is it's going to boot the system into its normal display. So this is what your process is going to look like on your home screen.

And unfortunately it is very cold today. But anyway, you can see here the system is disarmed and it shows active sensors. So it doesn't show anything here. But that's because these sensors aren't in use right now. So if we click arm, we can actually see that there's a front door, a panel glass break and a motion detector.

So the panel glass break is built in here as you remember. Then we have our front door and we have our motion detector. So under active you will only see these if they're like open zones. So if I open this door open it will pop up there. It means it tells me and I put it back. It disappears.

So that is how to get zone status and things like that. When you are going to arm you click on this ARM system type. You can click whether you want to arm in stay mode or if you want to arm in away mode. Now you can over here if you press this arrow if you wanted to, bypass sensors.

So let's say you did have an active sensor. Let's say this one was giving you trouble and you wanted to bypass it. You just click that. Now it's turned off for this arming period. You turn it back on, it'll come back. So you can't arm with open sensors. So this is how you bypass them if you need to, you can turn off exit sounds as well, and you can turn on or off the entry delay.

so if you wanted to arm with no entry, you come over here, hit the arrow, click this. And so if I arm in stay mode now I'm in stay mode with no entry delays. So if somebody opens that door any door, even a delayed sensor door, it's going to immediately trip the system. So after we're done there, just click off of it.

Now, this does have other screens you can scroll through. And each one is going to give you a little bit of different information. This one in particular is for the panel camera that I mentioned. That's right here. So if you have pictures that have been taken you can look through and see all of those pictures. But I don't have any right now because we haven't triggered one of those events.

This network setup is for the IC Wi-Fi, which I said we'll be getting into later, but it does bring up an actual card on the system, which is really cool. So when we get into that, you'll definitely want to want to check it out anyway, and then the last page is going to show you basically your system status.

So here you can do software update. If you click details it's going to take you to that software update page. It's going to let you download updates if there are any available over here shows whether your Wi-Fi is connected or not. And down here it tells you whether your Bluetooth is off. So you can actually turn these off as well.

So the installer code on this system is 1111. So if we turn on 1111, basically it takes us to the Bluetooth section so that we can turn off Bluetooth. Now anyway that's getting a little bit ahead of myself. So let's just go back to the home screen and I'll run you through some simple settings for this device. So once you've got this to this point, we can go in and adjust settings even deeper.

There's a lot of settings in here. You can adjust. Basically you swipe down from the top there. It brings down this blank section. and it works very similar to a tablet. It actually runs on the Android operating system. So it's just like a tablet, phone, tablet type setup. Anyway, bring down that drop down, click on settings.

And it's going to bring you to this page. Now from here we can do some simple setting adjustments like display SD card temperature status, Z-Wave stuff. but if you want to get into the actual, deeper settings, you click on Advanced Settings right here. Now it's going to ask you for user code, what it's asking for is either the master code for your master, advanced settings installer code for the installer settings, or the dealer code for dealer settings.

So by default one two, three, four is your master code, 1111 is the installer code, and 2222 is the dealer code. So if I type in 2222 here, it brings up all of these additional options. Now let's say I did that code but only use the installer code. As you can see I have a lot less options, but anything important I can still get into the dealer code is more for adjusting.

enter user code, everything. So if for whatever reason you wanted to change your the branding on the system, you can do that here. there's some additional stuff you can do depending on whether or not you're using installer mode or dealer mode. So anyway, to adjust the alarm system settings themself, you're going to go to installation here.

Now right there is where it would have stopped you if you didn't have the information plugged in for your contact info. Basically, it pops up and tells you to fill it out before you can go into installation. So make sure you do that. Now that we're here, we have devices, dealer settings, system logs, sirens and alarms, security and arming and camera settings.

So devices is talking about wireless sensors dealer settings. That's going to give you like your real in-depth like that's actually how you master reset the the equalizers if you need to like default it there's a bunch of stuff in there that you can mess around with. I will say I wouldn't change a whole lot if you don't know what you're doing.

in this section, because this actually determines how your system communicates and what it communicates. So if you are unfamiliar with these sections, just stay out of them. There's no reason to be in here. There's nothing you need in this section I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, but it's there and available if you want to use it.

So you can look through there, see what what it's got system logs that's going to bring up, the log for basically your event buffer if you're familiar with alarm systems, it shows you everything that happens, every event it keeps track of for up to a certain amount of time, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so when it alarms, that is going to bring up the siren settings for the panel.

Now these can be set up to control all sirens. So if you have wireless sirens connected these settings will affect those as well. Or you can just affect certain ones if you want to. but that's where those settings are under security and arming. This is where you're going to change. just some of the more common installation stuff like these delay times there at the bottom of this section.

But as you can see, the normal entry delay is 30s entry and 60s exit. Now, if you had chosen, the long delay, it would be 102nd entry and 122nd exit. But all of these are adjustable, so it doesn't really matter what we pick. We can get anywhere from 30s up to 240 on entry. And then for exit we can do from 45 up to 254 seconds.

So set those as you wish and make sure that your sensors are tied to the correct delay. And like I said, there's plenty of other stuff in here you can mess around with. panel tampers there. screen lock, secure arming, refuse arming when battery low, all kinds of settings you can turn on to adjust the way this system works.

And real quick I'll show you the devices tab. You can see your security sensors, Wi-Fi devices, Z-Wave devices, blue Wave or Bluetooth devices, and unsupported Z-Wave devices. Now, I haven't run into any of that are unsupported, but, if I ever do, I'll show you how that works. So if you choose security sensors, basically it gives you a whole nother section.

You can auto learn new ones, you can add the manually edit delete sensor status. to look at certain groups. Panel motion settings and remove all power sensors so that one is actually a wipe for all powered devices. If you just want to start over and you just click that, it'll wipe them all. But now that we've covered all that, that's where I'm going to end this video.

Like I said, I'm going to be doing quite a few more videos on this course. We're going to start adding Z-Wave devices. We're going to add power devices if I can get them, pretty much everything we can set up. Yeah, we're going to one really cool thing about this, since it has a little arcom communicator in it, you can actually tie video cameras to the glasses system so that you can view them.

And if they have two way audio speaking, hear through it as well. So we'll cover all that in later stuff. But for now I just wanted to give you guys a quick rundown of the qualities IQ panels. like I said, this is a two plus, but the current model is the IQ panel four, and that one is just as cool as this one, if not cooler.

So if you're looking at upgrading your alarm system and you have wireless devices or plan on using wireless, definitely check this system out. It is great. It's one of my favorite systems. anyway, for now, that's where we're going to end it. And I will catch you guys on the next one.