At 4:43 AM this morning every sensor on my alarm want off, the central station called, and informed me that they had multiple burglar, fire and medical alarms at the same time, I had them disregard the alarm and asked if they tried to activate 2 way voice because it seemed whenever 2 way voice is called upon the panel crashes, she told me when they trued to call it there was no answer, this aligns with my observation of the system crashing, I have been having the 2 way voice issue for a while but I got a call on my phone so I figured it was no big deal, recently my IQ remote has been disconnecting at 2am but that was solved with a dedicated wireless network, as it stands very few of my sensors are back online and my panel is making a weird beeping that I have never heard before. when I installed it about 2 years ago it was great but a few months ago I stared having random restarts especially during alarm events (aka at the worst possible time) some slow downs of touchscreen inputs (think early era smartphone) I would type in my user code and 5 seconds later all the numbers would pop up, another fun thing it does is report to alarm.com that it has a AC loss dispute being plugged in and reporting having AC power locally. What can I do to have this fixed, I would just like to buy an iq 4 but I’m not sure I trust anything Johnson controls makes anymore. this un reliable price of junk even fails to call out the the central station some times, I have the panel on its own Wi-Fi network with priority traffic routing on my home network, and I have a cell site in the shopping center across the street, this thing literally has the best case install and it still failed miserably. What are my panel options for 319.5 sensors now that interlogix is dead. This rant brought to you by being woken up at 4:43 AM Sunday morning.
Some of what you are reporting is resolved via firmware, particularly the input lag and mismatched AC failure reports should be resolved in 2.7.2
It looks like you upgraded the firmware to that version after this event.
What does not make sense or follow other patterns is the event you are describing with false alarms.
It looks like all 319.5 mhz sensors which were armed at the time reported an alarm signal within a short span of time.
Looking at your history I see a Water zone continued to periodically trigger alarm signals after that. Did you have water tripping that zone or is it entirely false activations?
I also see it looks like the last signal was a fire alarm. Did you test this or was it also a false activation?
This kind of avalanche of false alarm signals is not a known issue I am familiar with and does make me think there is an internal defect with your panel in particular.
When extremely weird issues arise, about half the time power is an issue and it is usually the first thing I like to check off. Are you using the included Qolsys plug in power supply for the panel? How long is the cable?
I see the system is not communicating at the moment. I am guessing however that it was powered off intentionally, is that right?
Hello I am using the included power supply, as for the water alarm the aulla sensor I have does have some false positives but this time it was definitely excessive, I am using the included power cable as well so I assume length is not an issue. I did power it off intentionally as it was making a very loud noise that did not seem normal and I just wanted to go back to sleep, I have a recording, as it does not seem like any alert or sound I have heard before from this panel, as for the fire alarms those are standard 120v alarms that all seemed to break at the same time, i am going to replace them with some IQ smokes as soon as I identify the other issue, i currently just have a interlogix firefighter. I should mention the fire alarm issue did not seem to be caused by the panel but by my own smoke alarms, and they happened about 12 hours apart. The last weird thing that happened is after I disarmed the system Sunday morning all the sensors were disconnected and they gradually came back online throughout the day. Any help would be much appreciated.
Offline is a normal status and it is normal for it to resolve in a staggered fashion if multiple zones have an offline error.
Having all zones show offline suggests different issues though than the standard ones.
On the IQ Panel 2+ there is a significant risk of this kind of issue if the RF sensor antenna is not routed out the back of the panel into the wall (or just out the back and resting on the surface if table mounted.) This is commonly the cause of this kind of issue.
If the thin white flexible sensor antenna is left inside the panel or potentially pinched in the back plate, it can impact many or all 319.5Mhz sensors.
Can you confirm the state of the antenna?
the antenna is hanging out the rear of the panel in the wall cavity, standard 90s home, built with drywall and all my sensors show strong signal., I have also had the panel for close to 2 years with no issue until a few weeks ago.
Alright, did you have any storms/power surges around the time of the alarms?
It certainly strikes me as a panel software error with the sensor radio, not an actual triggering of the sensors, but I am having a hard time finding a similar case. The number one thing I would do to troubleshoot is update firmware, which it looks like you have done.
Are you seeing any odd behavior now?
The behavior seems to have subsided, I don’t believe they were any power issues, I checked the logs of my UPS and it claimed the power was fine that night, I did double check my firmware was updated and the issues seems to have gone away, I even tripped the smoke alarms on accident and the 2 way voice seemed to be working now. The really odd thing is these issues come and go, for the past few weeks these have been on and off issues, although this past one finally drove me to make this post.
Another update: I tested 2 way voice by calling the monitoring center and tripping an alarm while on the phone with them, the operator told my she called the panel but she could not hear me and I could not hear her, I’m not sure what could be causing these intermittent issues as it worked perfect last night when the smoke alarms went off. The sluggish nature of user inputs is also somewhat back but not as pronounced.
2-Way voice, like other forms of voice calls, can be dropped and can be impacted by cell connection strength of the panel. It is commonly impacted or noticed first when the cell connection is spotty. In your case though it looks like in history the operator successfully closed the 2-way call connection after trying so it wasn’t dropped and may be more of an issue at the panel.
Do you happen to have a multimeter/voltmeter to test voltage of the transformer?
sorry for the late reply, voltage at the panel is 7 volts DC, I should also note that there is a cell site about 5 min walk away from my house with all major carriers so I imagine that it is not a connectivity issue.
If you reboot the panel, shortly after the reboot does the 2 way work when tested?
Its a bit late to test the alarm right now, i get home from work around 3PM I will test and update you tomorrow.