Qolsys IQ Panel 4: Accessing Remotely

[AUDIO LOGO] Hey, DIYers. Dylan here with Alarm Grid. Today, we're going to review how to get remote access to your IQ4 panel. So to do this, you are going to need to contact an alarm-monitoring company, such as ourselves, Alarm Grid, as they need to set this up with the alarm.com service. You cannot set this up without going through a company, and that service is not free. We do get a lot of questions about that. So I just want to mention that.

So for example, if you sign up with our company, Alarm Grid, we offer this through our gold and platinum-level plans. And that will essentially get you access to alarm.com. So you can access the system from either a web browser or a smartphone through an application.

We're going to go over what information you will need from the panel that you'll supply to your company so they can then get that set up with the alarm.com service. Essentially, you're going to need the IMEI number from the system. So let's come over here and I'll show you.

OK. So we have our IQ4 panel here. We want to get the remote access. So we've gone through a company, such as Alarm Grid. We signed up for a plan which offers the alarm.com service. And now, we need to supply them with the IMEI number.

So a couple of ways you can get that number. First, pretty simple. If you just look at the back of the panel here, the IMEI number is listed on the bottom left. It's this long number after it says "IMEI." You'll just supply them with this number here.

Now, say if you've already installed the panel onto your wall and you don't want to take it down to access that. You can also get that through the programming menu of the system. So we will turn on the system here. We'll press the top bar at the top there. We'll go to Settings, Advanced Settings. We're going to enter our installer code here, which is still the default. So that is 1111.

We'll go to About and then Cellular, because a cellular connection is required to set this up. Even though the panel can do Wi-Fi, that's an optional secondary path. Cellular is always primary. And if you want to be set up with alarm.com, cellular is required.

So after we press the Cellular option, on info, it is listed right there, IMEI. That's the same number that's on the back of the system. So either way, whichever is easiest for you, just get that number. Provide it to your company. They're going to use that to then register the system, connect this with alarm.com, so you can then access the system remotely.

All right. So we've gone through the sign-up process through our website. We've provided the IMEI number during the sign-up process. And our technicians were able to create the account and then get the alarm.com login email sent to us.

So when you get the email, this is essentially what it's going to look like. It'll say, "Welcome to Alarm Grid," and then you'll have the login name for alarm.com showing there. And then we'll have the Get Started option here. And then we can also confirm down at the bottom, it says, "powered by alarm.com." So we know for sure this is going to be our login email. So let's get started.

So first, click Get Started. That's going to pull up the alarm.com website. There's going to be a terms of service here, which we will agree. All right. So the next step is to create the password. I'm just going to use a simple temporary password for us. We'll set a confirm password here.

And as you can see, we do have requirements that must be met. Must contain at least one number, one symbol, one letter, and be at least 10 characters long. So we have met all these requirements. We're going to save.

OK. Security question. Typical security questions you'll get for pretty much a majority of your websites. I'm going to do make of my first car. I had a nice Volvo. Confirm.

OK. So this is the essential first login page here. Let's do Let's Go. Our system name, IQ4. You can name this really whatever you'd like. Here's some examples-- My Home, Vacation Home, Office, and Rental. I'll put this as IQ4 Office.

OK. Just more typical questions about the property. So in this case, we'll just leave it as single-family home since it's just a test. But we do have the option for townhouse, apartment/condo, and business. Primary residence, yes or no. Again, we'll just keep it as yes. And one adult lives here with four pets.

Property area, say about 0 to 1,000 square feet. And who is our electrical provider? Since we are in Florida, setting this up, I'm going to put Florida Power and Light. And you have the option to share outage information. For now, I'm just going to unclick that since, again, this is just a test account.

OK. Arming Reminder Notification. You can basically set up for alarm.com to notify you if the system has not been armed at a certain time. We can set up a schedule for this. We'll just leave it as the default here. So when the system has not been armed by, let's say, 11:30 PM on these selected days during the week, we want a notification to be sent to our email. And this is our general contact email as well. So feel free to email us with any questions.

You do have the option to add other options as well to this. So we have our email address here, but you can put phone numbers. And then once you set up the application, you can set up push notifications as well. And then something else very important is if we want to receive this notification, we have to set it to active. OK. So everything's looking good. Next.

These are general notifications that are set up by default. Alarm Events, pretty self-explanatory. If the alarm is triggered, you're going to get that notification. Action by Any User/Keyfob-- so if a user uses their code at the panel or key fob to arm or disarm the system, we'll be notified about that as well. This is good if you have multiple users set up with the panel. So you can know exactly what date and time the panel is armed or disarmed and by who.

Arming Reminder, that's the previous screen we were reviewing there. So if our system is not disarmed on weekdays by 11:30 PM, we're going to get notified. So we can log in to alarm.com and then arm the system. And then System Actions to Watch, this is more error notifications.

So as you see here, it says, Power Failure, Communication Restored, et cetera, et cetera. So if there's something going on with the system that's not an alarm or an arming event, and we have a sensor failure, power failure, lost connection to alarm.com, anything like that, we're going to get notified.

OK. So devices. So if you have devices set up with your system-- since this is just a demo, we don't really have much set up with ours. So the only thing showing for us is the panel camera. The panel camera for the system can be activated when there is an arm or a disarm, and when there is an alarm activated as well. There's a camera on the system that will take a screenshot.

OK. And this is just user code review. We'll just set it as the default of yes. Continue. OK. We're all set to go. Let's get started and get logged into alarm.com.

All right. So when you first log in to alarm.com, you're going to get this Get Started screen. This is going to give you a general walkthrough of alarm.com, what features it offers, how to customize it to better suit your needs, so on, and so forth. So this is going to be a quick summary here, the home page. And then we'll just explore on your own.

So automation. If you have Z-Wave devices hooked up with your system-- this is going to be devices such as lights, locks, thermostats, any home automation Z-Wave device-- it'll pull up here so you can create rules for these smart scenes. So say if I arm my system to arm away, I can set up a scene here to turn on some lights, lock my door, change my thermostat temperature.

OK. So that is how you set up a remote service for the IQ4 panel. We located the IMEI number from the system, either on the back of the system itself or through the settings options. And then we got that registered with our company. They set us up with the alarm.com account and now we have access to the system remotely when we're not at home.

If you did like the video, please Like the video. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell icon to be notified about any future videos we release. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. Our phone number is 888-818-7728. We have an email address, which is support@alarmgrid.com. And if you come to our website, www.alarmgrid.com, we have a live chat option on there as well. So feel free to use any of those. Contact us and we'll be happy to assist you. Again, my name is Dylan from Alarm Grid. And thank you for watching.