Using the Qolsys IQ Panel 2 with Alarm.com

[SOUND EFFECT] Hi, DIYers. I'm Jorge from AlarmGrid. Today we're going to be discussing whether or not the Qolsys IQ2 or the IQ Panel 2 Plus is compatible with Alarm.com. Quick and easy simple answer to that is yes. That's actually what most of us alarm companies use to activate the system. Now, what is Alarm.com? So Alarm.com is the platform in which the alarm companies or dealers like us use to activate the alarm system. It's also the platform that you, end users, out there use to control the system from your phone or from the website. So in a second here, I'll be showing you what the app can actually do. But just so you guys can kind of get a quick understanding of it, the app allows you to remotely interact with the system. You can arm and disarm it. You can setup email and text message notifications. You can look at the status of your system and sensors. Depending on what features you have enabled in Alarm.com and what you have added into your IQ 2 Plus, such as Z-Wave devices, cameras, thermostats, lights, locks, switches, garage door controllers, image sensors, geofence features, weather, or alert notifications, there's a whole different amount of things that you guys can get added to your Alarm.com profile or to your Alarm.com account. You just have to make sure you're signing up for the correct service and you have the correct devices added to your IQ Panel 2. Now the thing with Alarm.com and with the IQ Panel 2 Plus, when you guys are signing up for a monitoring service, one thing that you have to keep in mind is Alarm.com, they have cellular-based plans only. So what does this mean for you? A lot of you may be getting the IQ Panel 2 Plus. And you know that it has Wi-Fi and has cellular built in. And you may think to yourself, OK, well, maybe I want to enable cellular later. I may want to start off on Wi-Fi monitoring only since usually Wi-Fi plans are a little less expensive because there is no cellular fees associated with the plans. However, with Alarm.com, cellular is always pretty much required. They only have cellular price plans. So what does this mean for you? Even though the system has a Wi-Fi built in, you still have to have the cellular enabled for monitoring plan. So when you guys are considering getting the IQ2 Plus, keep in mind, it requires Alarm.com service, which means you're going to have to have a cellular path enabled, which means you're going to be wanting to look at the higher cellular-based plans. Typically, those are a little more expensive because there are cellular fees associated with them. And you don't have to go out there and contact AT&T or Verizon. The cellular fees actually get put onto the alarm company themselves, which is why their plans are usually a little bit higher. Now, this is beneficial, right? So a lot of you guys may think, oh, well, I didn't want to pay that much for monitoring. I didn't want to have cellular enabled. If you think about it though, having cellular enabled is actually really good. It's more secure and it offers you more redundancy. What I mean by that is if you have a panel that's connected to Wi-Fi only or internet only, if the power goes out in the house and you don't have your router or your modem on a power supply-- in case the power goes out-- well, there goes your internet connection. Any system that's using internet only and your power goes out is technically not reporting anywhere because it's lost the only form of communication path that it has. Now, with the IQ2 Plus-- which is one of the main reasons why Alarm.com does is it wants to make sure that all of the end users are actually secure and always have that backup redundancy plan, is so that if the internet loses connection, if your house loses power, if a burglar cuts the internet line to the house, well, guess what? Your system still has a backup battery built into it and it has a cellular communicator. So if the power goes out, the internet is cut, the cellular will still be able to be used to send out alarm signals. And if somebody breaks in during this time, the signal will be sent and an alarm will be triggered, and the central station will be notified or you will be notified. So it's always good to have cellular as a backup anyways. So now let's go ahead and get into the actual Alarm.com application and how it's used. So pretty much, after you've signed up with an alarm company and you've gotten your system activated, they will give you-- they'll send you welcome emails from Alarm.com. These welcome emails are going to send you through a wizard setup that allows you to create a password, username, log in information. It kind of walks you through the basic steps of it of setting up your Alarm.com profile the way you want it to. I'm going to show you guys here in a second. All right. So I'm going to show you guys here right now what the Alarm.com app actually looks like. Some of the cool things that you can do. Just a brief overview of it. So for me, my Alarm.com is an application. I'm using a tablet today. You can download this onto your smartphone. You can also access it through a website, alarm.com. And you can log in through an actual website on your computer as well. So mine automatically logs in. It already has my username and password saved. So as soon as I log in, it will take me to my home screen. Now, on this system, I have a couple of Z-Wave devices. I have a camera. I have maybe one or two sensors. So you're going to pretty much see here on the main screen, I have my scenes here. Scenes are basically, if I press a button and you have Z-Wave devices, I can like, from my away scene, when I hit the Away button, I can have my system Arm Away. I can have my thermostat put the temperature about to a certain temperature that I want it to stay. I like it neutral degree. I can have all my doors locked. I can have my lights turned on or off. It all depends on what Z-Wave devices that you have. It shows you the status of the security system. Right now, it's showing disarmed. It's matching the IQ2. If I click on the Security System, I can go ahead and arm it away. I can enable a couple of settings. So if I don't want it to do the beeping noise, I can select silent arming. For the videos, I'm going to leave it off. And I'm going to do an arm away real quick. [BEEPING] It will start sending the signal through. And the panel starts to countdown. It's almost immediate. Now the system is showing armed away right now. I'm just going to go ahead and disarm it. It'll stop it. Disarmed. The system will disarm. Now I also have some images here. The panel has a built-in camera in the front. So you can actually enable that camera. So that any time you disarm the system, it will take a picture. It's very nice. Let's say your kids are coming home from school and they're disarming the system. If you want to make sure that they're OK when they disarm it, you can enable that feature so it takes a picture of them. Or if you just want to see who's disarming the system at all times, you can enable that feature. I have a couple of video cameras that also show up on the main screen. I got my thermostat, which I can either pull up. I can bring it down. I will leave it at 74. I have my weather enabled. So it's letting me know the weather here in Florida. And I can enable lights. So this is my Z-Wave light. If I select the-- right now it's on the Black and White button. But if I select the Yellow and White, it will turn on-- send the command to turn on my Z-Wave light. And there it is. I can turn it off by hitting the Black and White icon. Yes. So this is all just from the main screen. After that, you have your navigation bar off to the left-hand side. You have your scenes. This is where you can go into a scene. You can edit it and you can add different devices and tell it to turn the device on, lock the doors, unlock the doors, open the garage, close the garage, set your thermostat to a certain temperature. You can play around with that. This is your security system. This is where you'll see your system at the bottom here. If you have multiple partitions-- which is something that the panel supports. It supports four partitions. It will have all of that information down here. Like I said, I only have one sensor attached to my system right now, which is the motion. So you'll see the motion detector. It says right now it's activated, which means it's an active sensor. On the left-hand side here, we have are all the images that the panel has taken whenever we disarm. That's the video room. We have our lock screens. So if you have any Z-wave locks, front doors, back doors, side doors, anything like that, all of those locks will show up on here where you can also control them. We have our video cameras. So we have a test video camera. We have some Alarm.com video cameras. The video cameras that work with the service are going to be-- you have to make sure they're Alarm.com cameras. We have a list of Alarm.com cameras that will actually stream to the panel as well. So you first have to enable the cameras through the app. On the website, you then have to enable the video streaming to the panel. Setup alarm system type. And then if you have done that, you should be able to view live video cameras by swiping right on the actual screen display. So it's pretty neat. You can view the cameras from the application and you can view the cameras from the panel as well. Again, that's something that requires Alarm.com service. I have my lights here. If you have multiple, we have an on or off. If you have dimmers, you can do that as well. You have your thermostat here. You have your users. You can create and delete users. So you can add user codes to the system. You can create different logins for multiple people. So like if you're thinking of installing the system here in your business and maybe you want to give a manager or assistant manager maybe some employee's log in information, you can do that. If you're living with multiple roommates, you can also give all your roommates different log in information. And if you want to restrict a couple of access, you don't have to give them full access to the system. You might just want them to have arm and disarm and control. You can do that through the app as well. And then after that, we have our settings and log in information. Here, you can link systems. You can change your log in name, your email address. And in the settings, you can enable notifications. You can setup series shortcuts. So if you have an iOS device, you can actually give it voice commands. So you can say like, hey, Siri, arm my system away, or arm stay, or things like that. There's other things. You can set up touch ID. You can edit the home screen to say what you want on the home screen. So if you don't want everything showing up on there, that's perfectly fine as well. But that's pretty much the Alarm.com service and the gist. It allows you to have pretty much full control of the system from your phone or from a website. The only thing you can't do with the Alarm.com application is program the system. That needs to be done locally at the system or you can have your alarm company help you with that. Now we have all kinds of monitoring plans for the IQ2 Plus and the IQ2 system. We do offer Alarm.com service. If you guys have any questions about enabling the service, getting it set up, please send us an email or call us. Our email is support@alarmgrid.com. If you found the video helpful, make sure you hit Like underneath, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and hit that little bell icon. So whenever we upload new content, you all get notified. I'm Jorge, and I'll see you guys next time.