Good Morning. One of my IQ Smokes went offline at 6am this morning causing a panel beep. (It was the “Blue Bedroom” ) When I troubled the smoke I received the trouble indication on the panel, so it reconnected. I then replaced the smoke on the ceiling and normal operation resumed. It is only a few months old, and this hasn’t happened before (with this or any of the other IQ smokes.)
However l did look at the sensor signal graph, and this particular IQ Smoke has much weaker signal strength than any other 319 sensor. Apparently it has dipped into the ‘red’ zone a few times in the past couple of days but this was the first supervisory alert. While it isn’t that far from the panel (maybe 50 feet, but 1 level up) it is farther than any other smoke.
I also did some searching on the forum here, and found that these should be 319, not S-Line sensors (Is that still accurate?)? I looked in my panel and all my IQ Smokes auto-learned as S-Line. I changed them all to 319, and then tampered each to make sure they were working. Since I’ve done that my signal seems to be slightly higher from this one IQ Smoke ?!?
Please let me know your thoughts. Should I leave these as 319 sensors, or should they really be S-Line? If I continue to have signal issues to that one room, is there a booster of some sort available or should I replace it with a PowerG smoke that has better range? (I’d rather not relocate it, since any other place in that room would be in the direct breeze of a ceiling mounted mini-split.)
If the smoke has been in for a while, I would recommend replacing the batteries.
After checking a few different things here, it looks like the smoke detector is not an S-Line device. Which would make sense that after changing it to 319 it would have a higher strength signal since now its looking for the correct signals from the smoke.
This would be something I would need to confirm with the rest of the Surety team here on Monday. I’ll keep you updated.
Here is a compatible signal repeater. Sensors using this repeater would need to be programmed as a RF 319 source, not an encrypted S-Line source, in the sensor configuration pages.
Hi, I didn’t think that repeater works with smokes but of course I could be incorrect. Even if it does I think money better spent might be to replace that one unit with a PowerG smoke.
However for now I reviewed the signal strength of all my sensors and I found that the most distant sensors (which really aren’t that far at all) are lower than I think they should be! So in addition to this smoke I have a freeze sensor and a door sensor with similar low signal.
I pulled my IQ4 off the wall and noticed my antenna was behind the mounting plate, not in the wall cavity. So I rerouted the antenna to be in the hollow void of the wall and re-mounted the IQ4. (Inside central wall of the home with no insulation)
I’ll wait about an hour for another signal test to populate in the sensor test graph and see how things are. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks.
Good news. Moving my antenna solved the issue. All of my sensors have much better signal. Here’s the graph of that one smoke as an example, showing the dramatic signal difference! Should have checked this back when I installed the panel!! Anyway, thanks all.
