I have a couple of interrelated questions. I installed a Qolsys IQ Panel 4 with Surety monitoring. I am able to get my own cellphone set up as a push device for alarm.com notifications but I can’t find the magic way of setting my wife’s phone us as a secondary push device (and for disarming). We have VZN iPhones. I have done the following:
-Upgraded the panel to the latest firmware
-Created an alarm.com user for her in addition to me
-Created an alarm.com login for her in addition to me
-Installed and signed into the alarm.com app on both phones
-Looked through every setting that I can possibly find on both the surety and alarm.com logins online (it’s possible I missed something, but I’ve looked three times).
When I go to set up the various notifications, I do see her phone and my phone listed, but only my phone has the “push” device listed. When I go to add a new device, there is no option to add another phone/push device, the menu just shows alarm-system-side stuff. In short, I want us to both be able to get alarm.com app notifications (not emails), but for various things. I want alerts for everything, but want to limit alerts that go to her so that she doesn’t get annoyed.
Secondarily to this, I want us to be able to use proximity disarming with both of our phones, so that when either of us get home it automatically disarms the panel. I’m not entirely clear how this works from a technical perspective. I originally had the panel paired to my phone’s bluetooth, but the panel kept randomly hijacking audio streams from my bluetooth headphones so I completely disabled all bluetooth connections. Yet when I came home the other day, the panel automatically disarmed. Is alarm.com using my GPS coordinates? How to I tweak the settings for this? Lastly, is the proximity disarming available with the lowest-tier plan (Surety Alarm) or do I need something higher? I’m using the first free month of one of the higher plans so I am not sure.
When I go to set up the various notifications, I do see her phone and my phone listed, but only my phone has the “push” device listed. When I go to add a new device, there is no option to add another phone/push device, the menu just shows alarm-system-side stuff. In short, I want us to both be able to get alarm.com app notifications (not emails), but for various things. I want alerts for everything, but want to limit alerts that go to her so that she doesn’t get annoyed.
If a second phone needs push notifications, they must login to the app on their phone, and on their phone within the app go to Menu > Notifications > and then enable Push Notifications.
Their phone will then be selectable as a recipient.
I originally had the panel paired to my phone’s bluetooth, but the panel kept randomly hijacking audio streams from my bluetooth headphones so I completely disabled all bluetooth connections. Yet when I came home the other day, the panel automatically disarmed. Is alarm.com using my GPS coordinates? How to I tweak the settings for this? Lastly, is the proximity disarming available with the lowest-tier plan (Surety Alarm) or do I need something higher? I’m using the first free month of one of the higher plans so I am not sure.
The proximity disarming only uses Bluetooth. Looking at your panel settings, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Disarming is still enabled.
So that I can best assist, what is the rough time and date when the disarm event occurred? I can look at the history to help potentially identify what happened.
Bluetooth disarming just uses the bluetooth connection of the phone. When it reconnects to the panel while the panel is armed away, it will disarm.
That feature is entirely governed by the panel and is not impacted by your service level. You can use Bluetooth disarming with any plan.
Thanks Jason. Now that I know it is in fact bluetooth-based, I’ll do a little experimenting with the proximity disarm to see what the behavior is, and I’ll follow up on that.
As for the push notifications, when I log into alarm.com on her phone using her login credentials, I navigate to the notifications and there simply isn’t an option to enable push notifications. I poked around in the notifications area to see if the option had been moved to some kind of sub-menu, but it is nowhere to be found.
Her is an iPhone 14 Max running iOS 18.3.2, alarm.com app is whatever the latest version is. On my iPhone 14 Pro with the same OS and alarm.com app, the very top-most option is a toggle for enabling push notifications. Interestingly enough, there are visual aspects of that same “notifications” page that simply look a little different when I look at both phones side by side. Could this be a permissions issue of some sort? If I recall correctly, when I set up her phone I thought I gave her the same level of access as I have.
I uploaded two screenshots. The one where information is redacted in light blue is from my own iPhone (note the toggle at the top for push notifications is present). The screenshot where items are redacted in orange is from my wife’s phone, which is the one with the problem.
These two screenshots were obtained from the app on each phone in exactly the same manner: I logged in with my alarm.com login on my phone (and her login on her phone), and navigated to the “notifications” page. Yet they look different. It’s a little bizarre.
The bottom pic is not the Alarm.com app. It’s the Alarm.com website in a mobile browser. Only the Alarm.com app can receive push notifications. You would have to install it from the App Store.
I have the alarm.com app installed on both phones and I’m using the app on both phones. If it’s loading the web interface on her phone, then it’s doing it via the app. I’m going to uninstall/reinstall app on my wife’s phone when she gets home, and will re-test it. If there’s anything else I can check or do, let me know and I’ll give it a try.
I think I may have solved it. I reinstalled the alarm.com app on her phone, and confirmed it’s the same identical app, because the app store shows I downloaded it previously.
I logged in with her account and immediately the GUI looked like it should (and does, on my phone). I was able to turn on push notifications and the iPhone now shows up in the “push” devices list.
I’d say this is resolved. How the app originally loaded the web GUI inside the app instead of the app GUI, I don’t know. And how deleting and reinstalling the app fixed it, I also don’t know. But hey, it works now!
