Alarm Silence, Not Disarm

[coo30]

I have a question about a real alarm situation. In the middle of the night someone attempts to enter my house causing the alarm to activate. Once the alarm is audible, most peoples go to reaction is to hurry up and type their code in on the bedroom panel to silence the alarm due to the stress of the noise and having kids/dogs etc. If I understand it correctly, by doing this, I am not just silencing the alarm, I am disarming the system ultimately saying to the monitoring center that everything is ok? Is there a feature that I missed that has just a silence alarm instead of disarm system so the monitoring center will see it is still occurring. The last thing you want to do in a real situation is to disarm the system and tell the monitoring center not to call. As it is now with the new policy they will not call to confirm an alarm and even before if you disarmed it quick enough after it went off they would still not call.

Here is part of the new policy if anyone was wondering how the sequence of events works:

“if an Abort signal is received following an alarm event, showing that you have disarmed the system, it will be accepted and the alarm signal will be disregarded.”

I will be sending a request message to revert it back to how it previously was so they will call to verify in case my wife disarms the system in a real event. I am not home to test out but I think the panel should have two options on the screen during an alarm, Disarm or Silence (keeping the alarm active). If they already have this feature disregard everything I said lol. I just couldn’t find any previous topic on this in the forum. I have a IQ Panel 2+ with several remote panels.

Thanks in advance for any help. You all are great when it comes to helping with the system.

[coo30]

Here is the example I found for an alarm screen on the IQ Panel 2+ with no option for Silence Alarm.

[tyler (Tyler G)]

Happy to assist!

If I understand it correctly, by doing this, I am not just silencing the alarm, I am disarming the system ultimately saying to the monitoring center that everything is ok?

That is correct, if the alarm is triggered and you enter the code to disarm this cancels the alarm. If you have 24/7 professional monitoring and the disarm command is sent before or during the time when operators are handling the alarm event, the operators will disregard the event by default.

Is there a feature that I missed that has just a silence alarm instead of disarm system so the monitoring center will see it is still occurring.

No, there is no such setting in the Qolsys IQ Panel 2+. Entering the code during the event will disarm the system.

As it is now with the new policy they will not call to confirm an alarm and even before if you disarmed it quick enough after it went off they would still not call.

To clarify, an Abort signal is a signal received by our monitoring center when you disarm your system. Previously even if an Abort signal came in showing that you have disarmed, operators would still require password confirmation from your contact list to disregard the alarm event. If there is no response or no valid password provided, dispatch will occur.

This was changed back in September '20 for Surety subscribers. Since then, If an Abort signal is received following a burglary alarm event, which indicates one of your authorized users have disarmed the system, it will be accepted as confirmation and the alarm signal will be disregarded. This significantly reduces false alarm dispatches and streamlines the process making the service more intuitive.

I will be sending a request message to revert it back to how it previously was so they will call to verify in case my wife disarms the system in a real event.

Absolutely, if you want to require a phone call and password confirmation regardless whether the system is disarmed or not, please shoot us a private message and we would be happy to change that for you.

[coo30]

Ok thanks for the clarification. It’s too bad there isn’t some sort of silence button so you can hit that while you investigate the alarm instead of automatically disarming the system. In an ideal situation, you obviously shouldn’t disarm it if you don’t know if it is a false alarm or not but when you have almost a dozen sirens going off and dogs freaking out. It’s the easiest thing to do. In the case of a real event, I disarm it because everyone is freaking out then get tangled up with someone, I already told the system everything is ok. But like I said with kids and dogs, I just want the noise to stop. If there was a silence button, cops would potentially already be in route. And if I was certain from the get go it was a false alarm, I can just disarm it. Have the system make several beeps every second or two instead of screaming at me.

Could we maybe put it in for a request? Idk if that ever works or not but it would be a nice feature. Have it like in my picture and when you hit it Silence you have to type your code in otherwise the guy could silence his own break in. After 2 minutes of silence it can start emitting the siren again.

[Waynetc]

Dovetailing on this topic- is there a way to know which zone was triggered? I don’t think it shows on the app during an alarm but perhaps I’m incorrect?

[coo30]

@Waynetc

is there a way to know which zone was triggered?

I believe a notification from the app will show what was triggered if I recall. Once you open the app it will show the sensors opened like it normally shows. Then you can also see in the history if you have time. Not the best to be playing with your phone if it is actually a real situation but since the panel doesn’t show it, look for a notification on your phone. I wish I had some old screenshots to show you from prior events but maybe someone with Surety can emphasis on it. I feel like on the top of the big red screen it should say Garage Door Sensor Triggered, Back door Triggered, etc.

[coo30]

[coo30]

In the app will look something like this.

[tyler (Tyler G)]

Could we maybe put it in for a request? Idk if that ever works or not but it would be a nice feature.

Sometimes feature requests like this do make their way into actual production/use and I am happy to pass this information along to Qolsys.

[xeon]

This is a good point/topic.

Something that comes to mind, but is not exactly the same (its actually the opposite) is the duress code…but this will for sure send the police even if its a false alarm but at least it will be quiet.

[Ilovemutts04]

Has this changed at all since this thread in Jan 2021? I actually think the ability to turn off the alarm but not disarm/cancel it is really important gor bring se to respond to the situation. If someone really did enter, then families need to be able to hear each other to communicate and respond. I would want to hear what is going on in my house, try to figure out where the intruders are moving to, do they have weapons, and for me to be able to focus on locating them. I can’t imagine trying to respond to a break in with the alarm going nonstop. Definitely please pass this on as a recommendation.

[jwcsurety (Jason)]

If you experience an intrusion as you describe, using the Duress code would be the advised course. The duress code disarms the system so additional alarms won’t happen, silences the alarm, but transmits a panic signal to the monitoring station to dispatch.

[Ilovemutts04]

Ah OK perfect, thank you!