Qolsys Hardwire 16-F Overview

Hi, DIYers. Joey from Alarm Grid. And today, we're going to talk about a new device from QOLSYS, the 16-F. What this device does, it's a hard wired to wireless converter. It allows you to land 16 hard wired devices or does 16 zones for hard wired devices on the unit. It works with S line encrypted communication with a QOLSYS panel. And it has some other really cool features that we're going to touch on today. The box for the unit looks like this. And I've already taken it out of the box. This is what the unit actually looks like. So if we take the cover off of it, you'll notice that there's a whole bunch of terminals on the unit. Now, zones 1 through 15 are for your burglary devices, hard wired burg devices. Zone 16 you can actually land normally open two wired smokes on the device. You can put 10 on the loop also. All the terminals for zones, they're all going to need of 4.7 K resistor, and that is supplied in the box with the unit. For your regular burg zones, if you're using normally closed sensors, they'll need the resistor wired in series. For zone 16 with the normally open smoke detectors, that will need the resistor wired in parallel. Having the ability two land wired smokes onto the 16-F is super convenient as it really expands the QOLSYS system and what it can do and how you can function, especially for those installations where you're taking over an existing hardwired unit and there's existing two wire smokes already up in the ceiling. This will make your installation much easier and less expensive because you won't have to replace so many devices. There's a few other things on the unit that you're going to want to know about. One important thing to know is that there is a temporal loop. This is right down here. The reason that this is on the system is that QOLSYS expects most people to take over an existing panel or panel enclosure with this. And in many panel enclosure boxes, there's a normally closed contact on the front of the enclosure so that if somebody tampers with it, you can get an alarm. Whether or not you have that where you're installing this, you're going to have to close this loop with a piece of wire if you're not attaching it to a normally closed contact for it to function properly. Also, you will need to learn it into the system by faulting and restoring the tamper zone. What this means is that when you have the QOLSYS loaded up into its center learn mode, you'll have to loose one of the terminals for the tamper, slip the wire out, then slip it back in. And it will learn in properly to the QOLSYS system. It's one weird caveat with this particular device. There's a couple other neat things that this can do. It has a built in relay for a hardwired siren. And it has a 500 milliamp output for that siren. It's super convenient as all you have to do is attach the siren to the 16-F, and it will work when the system goes into an alarm. It also has 500 milliamps of power for power devices such as motions, glass break detectors, or anything else that uses power. So it can supply that. And it also has a battery charging terminal, which you can integrate with a 12 volt DC battery. We recommend using a 12 volt 4 amp battery. You can even use a 12 volt 12 amp battery. They both work fine for it. With it plugged in to the 16-F though, the 16-F will continuously keep that charged up, and the battery will be able to provide it with backup power. It also ships with a plug in transformer, which is going to supply its main power to the board. And yeah. It's a really convenient hardwired to wireless translator. Again, it does use that S line technology. So if you do have an IQ2, it will send encrypted communication back and forth with the system. And if you are installing it into an existing panel enclosure, you can attach the panel enclosure tamper right here to that tamper loop. And even if it's going inside of a metal box, you'll see that right here on the side, there is an antenna terminal. Here's the antenna that comes with it. As long as you can get this antenna to stick outside of the metal enclosure wherever you do mount it, you will be able to have it work just fine as the signal won't get hampered as long as this is sticking out of the metal box. If you do have any questions though about the 16-F, how to install it, how to integrate it with your QOLSYS system, or anything else alarm or security system related, feel free to give us a call at 888-818-7728, send us an email to support@alarmgrid.com, or head over to our website www.alarmgrid.com. If you did enjoy the video, feel free to subscribe. And if you want to be notified when we post future videos, hit the notification button below, and we'll send you an update when we do so. Thanks for watching and have a great day.