ADC severe weather alerts - IQ2+ sirens

We had our first ADC severe weather alert, which is a handy service as we probably wouldn’t have known about the storm otherwise. My issue is that when the alert goes off that it triggers our outdoor siren, which would be a bit disturbing to all of my neighbors and would no doubt be accompanied by many complaints if it occurred at 3am. In our case it went off during dinner, which was more than a little disturbing to our 4-year old.

What settings are available to control how exactly the panel “alerts” for these severe weather warnings? If there are no options to restrict which sirens sound then I believe my only option is to request for this safety feature to be disabled. I am rather disappointed that there is no way to alert us rather than the full siren that would accompany a more direct/urgent emergency.

This is actually something we have reached out to Qolsys regarding a similar situation. The Weather Alerts are sent by ADC as messages to the panel, not alarms. The IQ Panel 2 is unique in handling the alerts with a full siren response if they are “Urgent” messages.

Any “urgent” marked message will result in the same siren sound and red panel screen. I don’t have an ETA on any changes that might come, but we will continue to push for this to be adjusted. There are no panel settings to adjust message response.

There is certainly benefit to an aggressive weather alert though, so there are trade-offs. We can certainly disable this feature for you if you wish. (Very soon you will be able to do so from your System Manager, btw. New features incoming allowing detailed service plan adjustments at any time).

Please let us know if you would like this feature disabled.

@Jason thanks for the update, the full “panic alarm” is definitely not the ideal way for handling these. I sent a secure message to change this setting on my account, thanks.

Jason, any updates on this? Did they fix the ADC weather alert integration with IQ2+ to not be full siren alarm event?

There have been no changes to severe weather alerts in version 2.5.0.

They are sent as urgent messages to ensure panels make an audible announcement. The IQ Panel 2 still uses the standard siren sound at this time for urgent messages.

I’ll resend a request regarding this to Qolsys for future versions.