Hi all, experienced a couple of strange events with my IQ Panel last night during a ‘Quick Exit’ that went wrong.
The short version is that I wanted to take the trash out (via the Garage Door) while the panel was “Armed Stay” so I used the ‘Quick Exit’ feature to start a countdown. While outside, I realized I needed more time, so I came back in to tap the panel to end the Quick Exit with the intention of disarming the panel afterwards. But before I could I attempt to disarm, the panel went straight into alarm mode (killing my eardrums, thanks) which I immediately disarmed since I was standing right in front of it, and then I got an immediate call from monitoring. (Thank god my wife had her phone nearby, because mine was on silent in another room while doing errands)
Here’s the two strange things:
First off, I’ve used Quick Exit many times with no issue, so I’m not sure what happened here. I remember seeing a FLASH of a right-hand active notification of “Garage Jammed” for like 1 sec before it went to full-screen alarm mode, but even then, why doesn’t it show ‘Jammed’ on my history (and what is Jammed vs Open/Closed) and why isn’t there the usual countdown to alarm, why does the alarm trigger immediately?
More importantly, why did this also bypass my monitoring delay? I specifically have a 60 second delay from Alarm to Call Monitoring to avoid false alarms and accidents (previously had an visit from the local police when we didn’t get to our phones fast enough, much to their irritation) but this seemed to trigger a monitoring call immediately.
Screenshot of the event history below (which also doesn’t show Quick Exit at all, in another piece of feedback).
I don’t see any indication of a sensor RF Jam message anywhere in history.
What it looks like is that Quick Exit was used to walk out, but the door was left open. When quick exit ended it then immediately caused an alarm, this would be expected if the door was left open.
Regarding the dialer delay, it is possible this scenario would not be affected by dialer delay. I am not seeing specific reference in the manual, but we will do a little testing to see what Alarm.com receives in that scenario.
Hmm, kinda makes sense in this scenario, if the “Quick Exit” ended, but the door was left open (or in other words: a door has opened during Arm Stay) I can see why that triggers an alarm.
But the surprising point for me is that it’s an immediate alarm. When I come home from the store, for example, and open that same Garage Door while the house is armed, there’s a warning countdown giving an opportunity to disarm. Perhaps “Quick Exit” behaves differently? (or is it different between Arm Stay and Arm Away?)
It comes down to user expectation. I like to have the warning countdown, even in Arm Stay (eg: had a door slam accidentally and it triggered a window break sensor, which also gave the countdown with plenty of time to disarm) so it was very surprising to see an immediate trigger. When there’s a scenario that this is bypassed, having that corrected - or the logic clearly laid out about what scenarios this happens and when it doesn’t - would help.
Similarly, even if the alarm goes immediately, I’m super disappointed that the dialer delay didn’t trigger. Again, user expectation, if I set a dialer delay, I have a good reason for it, and I expect that to occur no matter what the alarm event is. If the dialer delay is conditional, then I’d like to know what those conditions are (or even better, configure it to be consistent). Perhaps this is some feedback to the Qolsys team for their next update. (If that’s something I can do, would be happy to!)
PS: Regarding the RF Jam, it was just a flash of a glance at the panel screen when I was trying to disarm right before it went to the red alarm screen. I haven’t checked the panel yet to see if that has better logs on the hardware itself (mainly because I’ve got a little bit of PTSD from yesterday’s trigger lol) When I get time a little later I’ll log in with the admin PIN and check it out.
Yeah, that’s how it reports and functions in your history. Dialer delay applies to sensor alarms, this quick exit alarm had no pending alarm event awaiting the confirmed dialer delay time, it was an immediate alarm signal.
I am happy to send your description and feedback to Qolsys for review and possible future updates.
Beeps for Quick Exit are a setting on the panel, found under Settings > Advanced Settings > Sound > Exit Beeps.
I would also recommend updating firmware on your panel to also be sure you are on the latest version.
I had a similar issue today on my Qolsys IQ panel. System was armed stay and I intended to disarm but accidentally hit quick exit which is at the top left of the disarm button. So now I was in a quick exit countdown, that may have been 120 seconds or so but I didn’t want to wait two minutes since I needed to disarm. So I immediately tried two things. I opened the door hoping it would stop the quick exit timer. It did not. Next thing I tried was hit quick exit button again which was visible still to the side of the countdown timer. It appears this immediately caused the ear piercing pending alarm. I was prompted with the disarm box that then allowed me to disable the alarm. I don’t believe the pending alarm dialed out to my security provider so I think it honored the dialed delay. However it’s very odd that hitting quick exit again while in a quick exit duration would immediately trigger an alarm. Seems like a bug since the quick exit timer still had like 115 seconds on it when hitting quick exit again and triggering the alarm. It was like an unintentional panic alarm when you hit quick exit while in quick exit.
I would recommend also reporting any issues to your provider as they may be able to provide more context by looking through your system history.
However it’s very odd that hitting quick exit again while in a quick exit duration would immediately trigger an alarm
Was the door open while you pressed the quick exit button the second time? It sounds like that may be the similar behavior between the reports in this thread.
However it’s very odd that hitting quick exit again while in a quick exit duration would immediately trigger an alarm
This is an interesting take: because I posted this a while ago, I don’t exactly recall if I “exited ‘quick exit’ by pressing ‘quick exit’” and it triggered a fault, or I “exited ‘quick exit’ by pressing the shadowbox to the side to dismiss it, but a door was still open”.
Either way, both should be easy to reproduce for troubleshooting and confirming, but I am deathly afraid of testing this on my current (live) config, especially after the monitoring was immediately dialed like last time. I don’t need another grumpy law enforcement on my porch again.
I was so traumatized by this that I actually didn’t use Quick Exit again for a whole year, I only just started using it again this month, so getting some closure on this feature (and either what steps to avoid, or confirmation on a bugfix) would be great!
Edit: I’m also still surprised to see, a year later, that Quick Exit events still do not show on the history, at least on the panel directly (if not alarm.com) - that would also help with troubleshooting this issue if we could see direct logs of “Quick Exit Started” > “Door Opened” > “Door Closed” > “Quick Exit Ended by User/Timeout” etc… because Quick Exit does NOT show on the event timeline, you don’t know WHEN it occurred in relation to the door activity, nor can you tell if it was “double started” or not ended correctly, etc.
I’m not 100% sure but I do believe I may have been holding the door open still when I hit quick exit the second time. Given that my monitoring delay seemed to work I’ll try to test this out tonight and will report back the exact steps to reproduce if I can reproduce it.
If in Quick Exit countdown and door not open, clicking anywhere outside the countdown box cancels the timer and goes out of quick exit mode and back to armed mode. This includes clicking quick exit again since it’s outside the timer box.
if in quick exit mode and door is opened and then shut, you can still cancel out of quick exit the same way as described above.
if in quick exit mode and you have the door open, then you click anywhere outside the timer box, the timer goes away, quick exit is then cancelled similar to the timer running out, but now since door is open and timer is run out, you get immediate alarm triggered.
Given #3 this feels like a design oversight. Clicking out of the timer box if a door is open would ideally cause you to get a countdown to enter your disarm code instead of an immediate alarm. Designing it that way would be similar to if you opened the door while in armed stay. In the current way it zeroes out the timer you get surprised with an alarm trip.
Hope this helps explain!
Long story short don’t ever touch the panel while in quick exit with a door open!
Maybe I’m wrong but I feel it is designed like that due to that technically your system is armed and you are using the quick exit to exit the home without disarming the system, having the system automatically stay armed once the countdown is over. Might be rare but I feel the nature of it is due to safety, such as an intruder taking advantage of you opening the door and going in. The feature is expecting the door to be opened and closed in the designated time frame and if left open since the system is still armed is considered a violation for the system. For it to give you an entry delay, it should be based on someone entering the home but since the quick exit is meant more for someone leaving the home without disarming, that might be the reason behind the immediate alarm, it’s considered something out of the norm for the system.
Yes I understand your concern regarding false alarms, and I feel most of us are. But the at the end, every system I know that has a feature like that is designed like that for the safety of the home and family.
Yeah I see your point and it could very well be thought out and intentional. The computer programmer in me was just thinking someone programmed the quick exit cancellation feature the “easy” way and set countdown timer equal to 0 when you click outside the timer box, not really thinking about the potential side effect of that approach in this edge case where a door is held open.
Yess I get you, in my case I was thinking of it in the security aspect especially with experiences I’ve had before with stuff like that. So let me just say, it’s intentionally meant like that but for the purpose of security. Again, might be wrong but based on what I know of systems like these, it sounds like it’s purposely designed like that, which might also explain the immediate quick call from the monitoring center
if in quick exit mode and you have the door open, then you click anywhere outside the timer box, the timer goes away, quick exit is then cancelled similar to the timer running out, but now since door is open and timer is run out, you get immediate alarm triggered.
Yes, that’s what I assumed had happened in both cases. If quick exit stops while the door is open that will cause an exit fault alarm, similar to leaving the door open at the end of normal exit delay. The entry/exit zone must be secured by the end of the countdown.
If quick exit is stopped early with the door open the same would occur. It is an intentional security feature.
