PowerG+ / Battery Life / Future Strategy

Support
1

Hi. I have an IQ4 with 50+ sensors: Door/Window, Motion, Smoke, CO, Water, Tilt, Doorbell, External Sirens, and key fobs.

Every sensor is 319.5MHz, and many are greater than 8 years ago.

My only battery issue has been the IQSmoke and CO detectors, at least for me they don’t last more than 2 years. While we were just away, I kept getting the daily offline then online message, and usually during the AM hours!

My new strategy may be to replace the batteries once per year and hopefully never worry about this again. I may also start the replacement of the batteries in the door and window sensors and maybe the water sensors as well.

As I’ve been deciding on my future strategy, I noticed that the new PowerG+ sensors actually report their battery status to the IQ4 but it states for “dealers”.

Few questions:

If I started to install PowerG+ sensors over time, will we have access to the report of the battery gauge information?

When will Surety start selling PowerG+ sensors? I see them listed elsewhere.

Anything else I should consider?

Is there a way to mute the offline/online messages for a specific sensor while away. Every single day I got a message and many were in the AM hours.

Overall I’m thinking of upgrading for the future since it’s been almost 10 years since I started this journey. All thoughts welcome.

Thanks for the help!

2

I’m looking for confirmation if that is available to the end user and where specifically that would be displayed.

When will Surety start selling PowerG+ sensors? I see them listed elsewhere.

Should be soon but I do not have an exact ETA. Equipment does not need to be purchased through Surety in order to be used with service.

Is there a way to mute the offline/online messages for a specific sensor while away. Every single day I got a message and many were in the AM hours.

This is governed by System Actions to Watch and is a global setting. You cannot disable a single sensor from this list.

3

Thanks Tyler.

It would be great to have access to the battery info. The YouTube education video said it’s not an exact % number but would give a good indication when getting low.

My experience with the IQSmoke and CO detectors is they just start going offline and online randomly daily when the battery is at end of life. For now I will replace the batteries every year or two. They always last at least a year.

I may just replace all the batteries in every sensor at the start of the year, some are 8+ years, rather than upgrade to PowerG+, but then again I might just decide to replace one by one over time.

I need to look in that System Actions section. It might be ok to mute all sensor offline messages temporarily especially at night, it kept waking me up while away for the Holidays. The arm away would still be active.

Thanks again for the quick response.

4

Regarding battery level, this is viewable on the main panel.

On the main page, you will have the card with the tabs “Active” “All” and “Ambient.” On “All” it will show a battery symbol with some notches and color coded, green = full, orange = medium, red = low.

5

Hi. I decided to try two PowerG+ sensors, they just arrived.

I just replaced the front door sensor with PGP9903.

The panel shows open/closed on that All tab as usual, but I’m not seeing any battery indicator.

Anything special that I need to do to enable the battery gauge?

6

Ahha! I just did a PowerG System test and it shows the individual sensors, and it shows the battery level in the sensor data! 100% battery, and Strong signal strength.

It would be nice if there was an overall status screen for all sensors like you describe above but this works. It’s shows everything about the individual PowerG+ sensor on the test screen. Nice.

I may order and try a PowerG+ motion sensor next. Then Smoke and CO when those are available.

7

Interesting. Let me reach out to Qolsys again. I may have been given incorrect information. Unfortunately, I do not have an PowerG+ sensors for testing atm.

8

That does appear to be the case, I am sorry for the incorrect information previously. I have made a feature request for this to be more easily viewable and to not require a code to see. For Surety subscribers, this doesn’t matter as much as we provide codes, but it is still less than convenient. I couldn’t say if/when it would happen but sometimes features do get made based on requests.

For now, PowerG+ battery level is available on the pane, just through the PowerG System Tests > PowerG Test page

9

Thanks Tyler, you’re very responsive as usual!

For me, I don’t mind the code as much as you need to go into each device individually to see the battery gauge by hitting “more”.

At least it’s visible, which is awesome!

10

Its definitely something that people have asked for over the years in general so I’m glad its available. Just feels inconvenient in its current form. Hopefully that changes.

11

All has been good with the two new PowerG+ door sensors …

So I decided to next replace my non-SLine IQ Pinpad with the newer more secure PowerG IQ Keypad (IQKP-915) and I also replaced my oldest motion sensor with the new more secure PowerG+ Motion sensor (PGP9914).

The PowerG Keypad is cool, so much better than the Pinpad, and it beeps on entry so my wife can hear that the system is armed. Seems great so far.

For the PowerG+ motion sensor, just perfect with bigger battery and battery % on the panel.

What’s weird is that the PowerG Keypad is also showing the battery % on the panel, but it’s not PowerG+.

Anyone else have a PowerG device showing battery % on the PowerG test screen after hitting “more” for the PowerG device?

12

PowerG Keypad does report battery status to the panel via the All tab on the security page of the IQ Panel. Standard PowerG sensors do not.

13

Just looked under All, see the battery gauge, perfect!

I’d like to standardize on only PowerG+ purchases going forward. I’ll eventually replace all the motion sensors with PowerG+ after testing this one, then the smoke & CO detectors. I was disappointed that the IQ Keypad was only PowerG but the Pinpad was ancient and I wanted to replace it, but this is great, so I get a PowerG+ feature on a PowerG device. Awesome!

And when you sell PowerG+, will go back to getting everything from you!

I’m going to stick with the S-Line window sensors for now, since they’re already encrypted and work well, though I did just replace the doors with PowerG+. The window sensor batteries have lasted 8+ years with never a low battery, so I just replaced all with new CR2032 batteries, so I’m probably set with the windows for a long time again. I’m guessing that window battery life is so great because we rarely ever open a window.

My CO detecters are S-Line since June 2024 so I have another 3.5 years of life, so maybe they’ll be a PowerG+ CO by then.

Also I have 12 RE118 (triangle) water sensors, which are great sensors, and I’ll probably just stick with those for now. They’ve saved me 3 times already at least, bathroom leak, water heater leak, steam pipe leak. All discovered in seconds!

The only other sensors are the garage tilt which is a RE106, it’s the only tilt that I’ve found to be 100% reliable, I just replaced the CR123 battery. And the 4 zWave external IQ sirens which have wall power and work perfectly.

I hadn’t touched much in years so trying to future proof everything now. Love the Surety system, next up is both my kids homes, which still have IQ 2+ panels and older stuff.

14

Oh, and the Smart Arming has been perfect since your advice on how to configure with zero overlap.

It arms automatically when we go to bed and automatically disarms when we come downstairs in the morning.

Just an awesome feature! Wife loves it, me too!

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15

I know we’re planning to add more in the future but for now we have the PowerG+ Heat and the PowerG+ Water Tiles

My CO detecters are S-Line since June 2024 so I have another 3.5 years of life, so maybe they’ll be a PowerG+ CO by then.

Haven’t seem a part number for those yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were made available.