Hi all,
I have had security systems now for 10+ years and I’ve done DIY + central monitoring for my personal use since 2011, so I’ve seen a few systems.
Recently (a month ago) I bit the bullet and purchased a Qolsys system. It was from a different service, so this in no way reflects my view of SuretyDIY or their support. This is merely commentary on the product.
Long story short, I’m going to try and save someone the pain I went through. I would advise anyone thinking of IQ panel to look to another product, and ESPECIALLY if what you are after is using IQ2 as a secondary panel.
These are buggy products that are not ready for prime time, and in my view you should not rely on them to protect your home. Bad things happened in my case, things like I would open a door or trip a sensor and the IQ panel wouldn’t respond - it just didn’t see the sensor being tripped, at random. Other times it would see the sensor but there was a delay of 5-10 second. I could open a door, walk through it, close it and then count a few seconds and then the panel would respond. This kind of behavior would continue until I powered down the panel and pulled the battery.
Now, that’s a problem. If I cannot rely on the panel to respond when a sensor is tripped, then what good is it? And before anyone thinks I gave it one go and said the hell with it, I spent days troubleshooting this problem. I started off with new sensors, swapped several of them for new sensors again to make sure, all sensors had “excellent” signal strength when I tested it, I followed through all the troubleshooting steps of the security service I went through, they contacted Qolsys, and what quickly became apparent is that Qolsys is not interested in my issue or in solving it. Their responses - despite repeated requests from the security tech I was working with - amounted to turn it off and back on again.
Also I want to impart that anyone wanting “secondary touchscreen” functionality out of the IQ2 is likely to be underwhelmed. The included mounting option is a 2" circle of velcro, no joke. There is no provision made for running power remotely to it, by the skin of my teeth I managed to use CAT6 stranded together to get it powered in place, and rigged a solution to hold it a bit better on the wall, but at the end of the day it looks like a generic android tablet that has been dumbed down. It is missing many of the apps that are on the IQ panel itself. It connects only over wifi but I tried several different access points and it does a terrible job of STAYING connected. Half the time you go to use the panel and get the message that it’s unable to connect to primary. Then you have to mess with wifi settings or reboot the IQ2 before it will connect to the main IQ panel again. There is no notification that the IQ2 stops working either. That means if you rely on the IQ2 to chime when someone opens the door - say if the IQ2 is in master bedroom and you can’t hear the main IQ panel from there, then you can’t really rely on it, sometimes it works, sometimes not. Same with the siren if god forbid someone broke in during the night. It also has a problem with keeping time, frequently reverting to GMT for no reason. Also there is no automatic update for the IQ2, and there is a needlessly complicated procedure for downloading patches manually by typing in cryptic patch codes into the IQ panel.
While we are on the subject of patches, Qolsys tends to tinker around with their patches and the same patch code may equate to a different actual file… so for example if you downloaded “iq215” patch for IQ2 in mid to late december, you may have an older version… if you type “iq215” again it downloads a later version. This to me is bad - it should have been named differently and released as iq2151 or iq216 or something that is different. They slid this one under the rug and do not explain this concept well.
Also, these panels run Android. Specifically they run on 2.2 which was released almost six years ago. That’s ancient for mobile OS’s and there isn’t really any excuse why these panels shouldn’t be on at LEAST android 4.x But let’s put that point aside. What I’m driving at is that unlike other alarm systems in the past like Simon XTi and such, this one runs a full OS. There are more moving pieces and Android is notorious for being temperamental if it isn’t implemented just right and I can tell you these people have not done it just right. With the XTi there was a lot less to go wrong, and you could still control home automation stuff like door locks, lights, thermostats, plus zwave and image sensors and the like. I only mention it because I had an XTi for years and it was reliable… never had any problems like this. This is not an endorsement that XTi is the direction you should go by any means, it’s an older system. But it did work reliably and had real actual secondary touchscreens that were meant to be mounted.
Because both I and the security tech were at wits end, I tried calling Qolsys myself and they refuse to talk to anyone who isn’t a security dealer, even if you stress that you are not asking them to troubleshoot your system in any way and just want to make suggestions or get a feel for the state of the product from their viewpoint. They simply don’t want to hear from you.
I’ve never used 2Gig’s stuff before but I may be looking that direction now. In any case, that is my experience with Qolsys. I’m sure some of you use it and are happy with it, but I really really tried to make it work and in the end I couldn’t get comfortable that I could rely on this system to work. If I save even one person from having to go through what I went through, writing this will have been worth it.