Wireless Alarm System: Resetting

Hi DIYers. This is Michael from Alarm Grid. And today, I'm going to be showing you how to reset your wireless all-in-one alarm system, wireless all-in-one alarm panel. So there are two types of resets for any alarm system. There's a power cycle reset, which basically means rebooting the system, turning it off and then turning it back on. And then there's also a factory reset, a factory default. And that's a little bit more of an extreme reset where it's going to wipe out all the settings, all your programming information. You're going to have to start with the system from scratch. But the main reason why you would be powers cycling your system, maybe you have to install some new hardware and you need to power it down. There could be something wrong with your system and you just need to give it a little reboot, much like you might do on your phone or your computer if it's not working properly. So you just give it a quick little power cycle and there you go. And as far as a factory default, like I said the more extreme type of reset, you might do that if the problem is not being fixed, if it's a last resort troubleshooting step, that might be a case. Or if you just want to start with the system fresh with factory default settings, then you would go ahead and do that. So for a wireless system, sometimes there's a menu option where you can do a power cycle where you can select an option, and it will power cycle the system. But as a traditional way, any system is going to allow you to do a power cycle by cutting power and then restoring it. So I'm going to show you that method first and then I'm going to show you a power cycling process. And then I'll also show you a factory defaulting process. So we're going to explore three different things today. But we're going to start on our GC3e right here behind me here. I'm going to show you the manual power cycle and not by manually cutting power and then restoring it. And then we'll look at the IQ 2 a little bit later, but we'll do that when we get to it. So let's start with our GC3e system right here. So I'm going to cut power to it by cutting AC power and battery power. So I have to open up the panel. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to take it and just kind of-- just get it off the wall here. Let's see if we can get it. No, we don't want an emergency trigger here. Let's see if we can get in here. There we go, just like that. Came off. So we got it off the wall here. And you see, we have AC power coming in from-- this is a Honeywell LT cable here. And we can just go and disconnect that. So unplug that. We're going to pull it down so it doesn't come loose-- doesn't go away on us here. And we're going to also cut battery power by undoing the battery connection here. And then we're going to see that the system is completely powered down. It has no power to it, so it is not producing power. So to complete the power cycle, we have to restore power to the system. So with a wireless system, what we want to do is we want to restore battery power first. So we're just going to plug that back in, you see it's back into the port. And that's not going to power on the system, the system won't power on battery power alone. We need to restore AC power. So we're going to take our LT cable, and we're just going to reconnect it here. Let's if we get it. There we go. And then let's hopefully get this back onto the wall here. There we go, its pretty secure. We'll make sure it's good later, but this system is powering back on once we restore AC power. And if you cut AC power in a different way, maybe you unplug the transformer from the wall outlet. Then plug that back in or maybe you cut power at the circuit breaker so you could restore power at circuit breaker. However you cut AC power just go and restore it, but you do want to do battery first. With a wireless panel you do the battery first. And then AC power second when powering on. And that pretty much works for any wireless system. You can cut power and then restore it. But like I was saying, some panels do allow you to do a menu option for a panel reboot, for a power cycle reset. So I'm going to show you that on the IQ 2 which is a really easy panel to do a reboot on. So we're at the main screen of our IQ Panel 2 Plus. I'm going to click the small gray bar at the top. And I'm going to choose settings. And I'm going to choose advanced settings. And then I'm going to enter in install our code here, 1111. And then you see we have an option for panel reboot right there. I'm going to click that. And it's going to ask us if I want to reboot, I'm going to choose OK. And you see it's doing the shut down process, and we're going to do the reboot. So we're going to wait for that. And while we're waiting for that, I'm going to explain a little bit about a factory reset. The most extreme type of reset that you can do, it's going to clear all the settings. This is going to differ depending on the system you are using. I'm going to show you on the IQ 2 here just because it's an easy one that I remember how to get to. But if you are doing it on a different system then you will want to refer to the manual for that system on how to do the factory reset, and you might want to look at what exactly that entails because it's going to reset pretty much all the settings. There can be some exceptions, but it will depend on the panel you were using really-- like I said, just really depends on the panel. Then there are all sorts of different factory resetting processes, some of them involve powering down the system and holding down a button while the systems are being powered back on. Some panels will have the menu option, it's really going to change depending on the system. So you see we are waiting for IQ 2 to get going. So we'll wait a brief moment for it to come back up. So we got our IQ 2 to come up. So now I'm going to show you the factory default process, the factory resetting process. So what we're going to do, we're going to start from the main screen of our IQ Panel 2 plus. We're going to hit the small gray bar at the top. We're going to choose settings. We're going to choose advanced settings. And then we're not going to use our master code, we're not going to use our installer code, we're going to use our dealer code, which is the highest authority code on the IQ Panel 2 plus. And that default code is 2222. And then we're going to choose installation. And then dealer settings. And then we're going to scroll down, quite a ways. And we're going to see master reset. Erase all content and settings, and restore to factory defaults. And we're going to hit that, and it's going to reboot and reset all installed applications. So let's go for it. And now, our IQ Panel 2 plus is going to do its factory reset, and that's going to take a few minutes. So we're not going to worry about that. But that is how you would factory default the IQ 2 plus. A different panel is going to have a different factory resetting process, so refer to the manual for your system if you want to do a factory default. And remember to only do that in extreme situations because you will have to reprogram the system entirely including all the zones, and depending on your system set up that could take a while. That is how you reset your wireless alarm system. There is a power cycle reset, and then there's a factory reset. So if you have any questions about alarm systems, or about 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 to like video. And remember to subscribe to our channel for updates on future videos. We hope you enjoyed the video. Thank you.