I am planning on purchasing the IQ4 Panel from Surety, as the brains of my security system and had a few questions:
My understanding is that Security/Quolsys does not support Z-Wave Sensors, but does support other Zwave devices like lights, outlets, etc. Is that correct?
I purchased 2 Yale Assure Z-wave locks for my front and back doors. The plan is to tie them into my Surety Quolsys Panel. After adding the locks to the Panel, is it possible to also add them to my Hubitat Hub, so that I can do home automation from there?
Am I correct that in order to have your AI Doorbell Camera ring to a mechanical chime, you will need the Doorbell Camera Power Module ( ADC-VDBA-PM-750), is that correct?
My understanding is that Security/Quolsys does not support Z-Wave Sensors, but does support other Zwave devices like lights, outlets, etc. Is that correct?
Correct, sensors need to be one of the RF radios on the panel. For instance if you get the 319.5 Mhz IQ Panel 4, it supports both 319.5 Mhz Qolsys and GE sensors and PowerG sensors.
I purchased 2 Yale Assure Z-wave locks for my front and back doors. The plan is to tie them into my Surety Quolsys Panel. After adding the locks to the Panel, is it possible to also add them to my Hubitat Hub, so that I can do home automation from there?
Z-wave devices cannot be independently paired to two separate controllers. The controllers would need to be linked after the locks are added to one controller. The ability to Add/Remove secondary controllers can be unlocked on the panel by enabling Advanced Z-wave Settings in your Z-wave settings menu.
This is found on the panel under Settings > Advanced Settings > installer code > Installation > Devices > Z-wave Devices > Z-wave Settings.
No specific secondary hub is officially compatible or has an official guide from the manufacturer to my knowledge. This would be the only way to control a Z-wave device through both the IQ Panel and a second hub however, and other users have done this with other hubs. A user wrote up a guide on what they did to integrate the panel using Home Assistant.
If successful though you would have remote control/automation in both ADC and your hubitat controller.
Am I correct that in order to have your AI Doorbell Camera ring to a mechanical chime, you will need the Doorbell Camera Power Module ( ADC-VDBA-PM-750), is that correct?
No, the power module for the VDB750 is not always needed, and is used for digital chimes typically.
@DamienR8
I just installed the VDB750 with a mechanical chime yesterday.
In my case the mechanical chime gave only one chime (instead of the normal 2 chime sound). Using a multimeter, I realized my 25+ year old doorbell transformer was low on voltage (about 11 volts). I replaced the it today with a 16V 10VA transformer, and the mechanical chime now works great. (the VDB750 worked fine even with the low voltage. And it can ring on the panels which is a very nice feature since you can see the doorbell cam right on the IQ4 panel!).
In my case the mechanical chime really isn’t even needed — but who wants to patch and paint the wall? lol
On the topic of Z-Wave, I had a Smartthings hub, and thought of replacing with Habitat, but instead moved everything to the IQ4. It is now my only Z-Wave / Home Automation hub. However in my case I had no Z-Wave sensors… everything was lighting and locks.
This is my journey… thought it might be helpful as you plan the design of your system.
Thank you very much for the color. I will definitely check the mechanical chime tomorrow to see what state it’s in. It’s about 19 years old at this point!
In your opinion, would you say the IQ4 is versatile in it’s z-wave automation logic? I know it’s not going to be as detailed and granular as smartthings or Hubitat but i am looking at somewhat complex automations.
The automation logic seems to be rooted in alarm.com’s rules and schedules, which are rather flexible, but I have found myself wishing there was a better trigger to choose from to kick off an automation. I just had to re-think my logic to get it to work. Also Automations seem to do only one action, rather than multiple nested logic.
One example of something I couldn’t replicate → Whenever a light is turned on (via z-wave smart wall switch), turn it off 30 minutes later. [Basically to create a wall timer for a shower light/fan]. I couldn’t figure out how to make that work. Instead (realizing this was because our housekeeper always leaves the fan on when she cleans) I created a rule that turns off that shower light every Thursday at 1pm. (she cleans on Thursdays)
I don’t see a way to integrate it to IFTTT or Total Connect 2.0 so those options seem to be out. With Smartthings (and I’m sure Habitat) there was a lot of customization possible via manual coding but I don’t see that with the IQ. There are some home grown plug ins for the IQ4 but they tend to leverage Control 4 integration which seems to only interact with security sensors and not the z-wave components. (such as the Homebridge integration plugin, etc.) At this point my automation needs are fairly basic and the IQ4 does those with ease. I was thinking I wanted HomeKit integration but couldn’t see a compelling reason since the alarm.com app does it all for me.
I guess to best answer - could you tell me an automation you’d say is complex and I’m happy to tell you how / if that might work in the IQ4. (if I can)
I’ll also add here: Smartthings was great, but it messed up - a lot! Automations would sometimes misfire (not turn on or off everything it should) etc. The Iq4 however is rock solid. Very fast, very reliable triggers and actions. AND it tells me on the panel when a device is misbehaving. The z-wave utilities built in are 1000x better than with Smartthings. Very impressed.
I’m very captured by your response and the example you used with your housekeeper. To recap on my end.
I want to use the IQ4, with Surety’s service for my alarm/security system and I want to keep that system and it’s sensors separate from my Hubitat hub. This is mostly ok, because all of the sensors for the system are PowerIQ. The only non-IQ devices integrating with the alarm/security system are the z-wave enabled Yale Assure Locks 2. I want my wife to be comfortable with my approach, of containing everything within Surety - she has not asked for anything in this new house we moved into, except for an Alarm setup
I think I will follow your approach and see if It makes sense to potentially get rid of the Hubitat and consider doing all of the automation in IQ4. This will first require me to set up Hubitat as a 2nd controller in the IQ4 Hub (So i can see the z-wave hubs) and make sure that it’s working. Here are some basic automations that I’d like to accomplish for safety and convenience.
Rear patio gate entrance (which is used the most because our cars are parked right behind).
Someone enters patio through the patio entrance after sunset
Patio door close sensor trips
Turns Patio light on
After 3 minutes check if gate is unlocked and if so, leave patio light on for 2 additional minutes.
After those 2 minutes turn off light and alert me that gate is unlocked.
Font Door Entrance
Wife comes home after 8:pm and opens yale front door with her password.
The door unlock event checks to see if my phone or some zwave fob I have on my keychain, is in the house.
If it’s not, the 1st floor livingroom, foyer and dining nook lights turn on automatically.
I’m assuming those 2 potential automations cannot be done in IQ4 - though i’m open to any suggestions you have to rethink and keep it simple.
Your #1 scenario with the gate: I can’t envision a way to make that work with native rules. The timers (2 mins later, etc) are the impossible part. Without that layering multiple rules together might get you close.
One rule to turn the lights on for xx mins after the gate or patio door opens after dark
a NOTIFICATION (not a rule) to alert you if the gate is left unlocked for more than x minutes.
Your #2 scenario: The impossible part is the check to see if you are already home and then do a different action. All their rules are rather basic TRIGGER-> ACTION ->TIMEFRAME style rules. They don’t seem to be able to do any compound logic.
The other painful limitation (that I hope they fix one day) is that the triggers for locks and panel (lock/unlock and arm/disarm) are global. You can’t limit the action to a particular user. Which is very strange. I hope they fix that soon.
(You can setup a NOTIFICATION to trigger on a specific user doing a panel or lock action, just not trigger a rule with it… they are so close I don’t know why it isn’t implemented.)
So for your #2, it would be Lock is unlocked after 8pm then turn on the lights (and you’d be able to say leave on forever or for a certain amount of time.)
Alarm.com needs to add timer/delay options to automations. I think they think it’s too confusing for many people. But come on!
As a workaround, if you have some kind of external timer device, you can use a z-wave relay or panel programmable output to trigger the external timer and then have the timer trip an alarm sensor to trigger the follow up automation in Alarm.com. It’s a lot of effort for something that should be built in already but I think it will work.
The IQ Hardwire PowerG is good for this because it has both the programmable outputs and the sensor inputs on the same device.
You wouldn’t need an external timer. PGM outputs have a built-in timer. You could wire an output on the Hardwire PowerG directly to a sensor input and use it as a timer. Activating the output would start the timer and the sensor would trip when the time is up.
