Qolsys IQ Panel 2 Plus: Solving S2 Protocol Issues

[music playing] Hi, DIYers. This is Michael from AlarmGrid. And today, I'm going to help you solve S2 security protocol issues on the Qolsys IQ Panel 2 Plus. S2 is the more advanced security protocol, used with home automation devices, that is z-wave devices. It's usually found on z-wave plus devices only. You're unlikely to find it on a classic z-wave device. It's more secure than the S0 protocol. So it's just basically a more secure protocol for your home automation devices. So in order to get the S2 protocol, you will have to have three things in place. First of all on the IQ2 Plus, you will want a z-wave firmware version of at least 6.81.03. That's 6.81.03. That's the earliest z-wave version that will support the S2 protocol. You will generally also want to have your IQ2 on system firmware version 2.5.3. Now, while it was technically introduced on 2.4.2, 2.5.3 was where they fixed a lot of the issues with the S2 protocol. And it never really hurts to have your IQ2 on the latest firmware version. And so you want to make sure you have your IQ2 on at least 2.5.3 to ensure that everything goes smoothly. And last, you want to make sure that the z-wave device you are using supports the S2 protocol. We're going to show you one today, we're going to use the Honeywell T6 Pro z-wave thermostat. We're going to show you the end of that enrollment process. We're not going to show you the whole thing, just because we want to give you a demonstration of how to solve these issues. But we will show you the end of the pairing process to show you what it looks like when you are adding an S2 device to your IQ Panel 2 Plus. So first, let's go into the About menu on the IQ2. And I'm going to show you how you can check the z-wave firmware version and the system firmware version. So we're at the main screen of the IQ Panel 2 Plus. We're going to click the small gray bar at the top. We're going to use Settings. We're going to choose Advanced Settings. And then we can enter in our default installer code. If you change your installer code, enter whatever code you changed it to. But we have ours at the default of 1 1 1 1. And we're going to choose About. And then, we're going check the z-wave protocol first. So we're going to choose z-wave firmware version. And you see that it says 6.81.03. And that's the version that we need to support it. That's the highest version we know of right now. But if they release a higher one, then the assumption is that it will bring in the S2 protocol support. So we have ours on at least 6.81.03. So we're good. And then we'll look at the software. And, yeah, right there, software version, we have 2.5.3. I clicked on it again, 2.5.3. And then the rest of it's not super important, but we have 2.5.3 on there. So we're good. That's the firmware version we want. Like I said, that was when Qolsys fixed a lot of the S2 issues. Earlier versions had issues. And users had a bad time. So they fixed it. And we have ours on the version. If you don't have yours on the right version, then upgrade the software version and/or the z-wave firmware version. It doesn't really matter which order you do that in. But we have FAQs that will help you to do that. So do that if necessary. So now, I'm just going to go to the back in here. I'm going to choose Installation. I'm going to choose Devices. I'm going to choose Z-wave devices. And we're at this Z-wave menu here. So now, I'm going to go to our T6 thermostat. I'm going to get that set up for enrollment. We are going to do a traditional exclusion-inclusion process. I'm not going to show you the exclusion process. You've seen that before in other enrollment videos. But I will show you the end of it, so we can show you what the S2 protocol looks like when you're enrolling an S2 device. But we're going to go and do that now. OK, so we've done the exclusion process on the IQ Panel 2 Plus and the T6 thermostat. So now, we're going to include the device. Our assistant is pressing include on the z-wave thermostat now. And we're going to Add device. And we're going to press the Include button. And it's now searching for z-wave device. Remember, we did this both on the panel and the T6 thermostat. And it discovered a device. And now, you'll see that we get this message. The S2 node is requesting the following S2 security, S2 unauthenticated. That's exactly what we want to see. So by keeping this box checked as we go through the rest of the inclusion process, we are using the S2 protocol. Now, if you are having issues enrolling it for whatever reason, then you might uncheck the box. But we're just going to press OK. And it's just retrieving some info here, going through the typical process. OK. So it went through just fine. So now we can choose an ID number and a thermostat type-- well, we want to keep it as a thermostat. And we're going to keep it as just thermostat, the name. We're going to choose Add. Thermostat is added to network successfully. And you see it has been added successfully. And we did that using the S2 protocol. That message that came up, we kept the box checked. If we uncheck the box, then it would enroll using the older S0 protocol, which is less secure. Now, if you are having issues for whatever reason, then we do recommend unchecking the box and just using it as an S0 device. But in most cases, it should go through like this. Remember that you will need to have a z-wave device that supports this feature. Like I said, the T6 Pro z-wave plus thermostat that we were using supports the feature. So we use that. You will want to generally go through the process a bit quickly, because if you hang around at the screen too much as it's trying to pair, then it can often fail to get the S2 set up. So that might be an issue. So just try to make sure you go through the process fairly quickly. And remember, you will do an exclusion process first. We didn't show that on camera, just because you've seen programming for z-wave devices before on the IQ2 Plus. It's generally recommended you exclude and then include. We just showed you the end of it. But that's how you go and you enroll a z-wave device using the S2 protocol. And if you're having issues, remember, you want your z-wave firmware on the IQ2 to be at least 6.81.03. And generally speaking, it's good to have your system firmware on at least 2.5.3. So if you're having issues with the S2 protocol, then that those are things you can look at. So if you have any questions about the IQ Panel 2 Plus, or about home automation, or alarm monitoring services, send an email to support@alarmgrid.com. If you found this video helpful, make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you liked the video. And remember to subscribe to our channel for updates on future videos. We hope you enjoyed the video. Thank you.