I think they mentioned above that they have no desire for the monitoring an none of the 2gig/power/IQ sensors.
Didn't notice that. Sounds like the house came with an IQ panel though, so there must be alarm sensors and maybe smokes, so why not use them?
But if that's not desired, then drop the alarm.com subscription and just use the IQ panel as a hub for PowerG sensors, and react to events from them in HE.
He already owns the panel. He's looking to install outdoor motion detectors and I would go with PowerG detectors for their range, encryption, etc.
I'm probably going to get one of these. One issue with PowerG devices is that they're significantly more expensive than other sensors. The cheapest I can find for the PG9312 is $103. On eBay ~$60. The Ring outdoor contact sensor works pretty well, but I have a spot where it doesn't. $50 retail, $40 on eBay.
This is where I got mine. $89. Still a bit pricey, but I don't mind paying premium prices for security sensors.
DSC PowerG PG9312 915MHz Wireless Outdoor Magnetic Contact - Advanced Security LLC
Be careful about buying PowerG sensors on Ebay. Make sure you're really getting the right frequency for your area. I've come across sensors that were listed with the wrong part number, and in the description the frequency didn't match. I tend to stay away from Ebay for things like this now.
Let me catch some of you all up. I bought the house new. The Qolsys panel 2+ came with the house. I got 6 devices with it; the builder pretty much gave the buyer what we needed (thermostat, garage door, doorbell) to live in the house. No sensors. Yes, I have smoke detectors in every room but they are stand alone, no integration. They Qolsys vendor gave away contracts that we were locked in for 2 years with the hopes of selling us a crap load more. Basically I'm starting from scratch.
The house is 1,600 sq ft on a 5,000 sq ft lot. I have more than enough signal reach with long range z-wave devices where I shouldn't have an issue, the lot is too small, 100 feet, front to back. 50 feet wide. I added a z-wave repeater in the garage.
The builder sold the system as a home automation system. Since the house didn't have the panel installed the day I closed, I didn't know what I was getting. The vendor came to install the panel and configure the devices. They also sent a very aggressive salesman who wanted to sell me about $2,500 in devices and monitoring. I was not amused and told him to leave. I was locked in to a contract that was free. They would not release the panel until the contract expired.
I live in a relatively low crime area. I don't need monitoring, one of which is a cop lives across the street from me and is kind enough to park his police SUV in front of my house across the street.
I never had any sensors to start with. I have moved all my z-wave devices to my C-7. I'm left with the Qolsys and the doorbell. I can get z-wave smoke detectors and motion sensors that cost way less than Qolsys devices. As someone said, PowerG is much more expensive. As of today, all that's left is the Qolsys panel and the doorbell. Everything else has been migrated to the C-7.
You can take the ADC doorbell I have and toss it in the garbage. It takes about 10 seconds to get a notification that someone is on the porch or the bell was rung. Video in it works maybe 1 time out of 10. alarm.com web interface takes 5 minutes to have the video available. Neither the original vendor or the new vendor has been able to figure it out. Both say it's an alarm.com issue. Alarm.com says it's a poor WiFi issue. It isn't WiFi.
So since I need to buy the sensors and can get z-wave sensors do I really need the Qolsys panel? I can replace the doorbell with something else. I don't question the quality of the panel. I agree it's a good panel. But do I really need the panel any longer?
Agree, you don't need the panel. The IQ2 is pretty dated anyway. All WiFi doorbells have some delay. IMO even 1 second is enough to miss a delivery person. If your doorbell position has a CAT5/6 cable you may be able to install a smaller delay POE doorbell.
Wow, that's brain-dead marketing. They should have at least put a sensor on each exterior door, or perhaps some smoke detectors. That might have given you some incentive to use the system and ultimately pay for monitoring, more sensors, etc.
You already own it, so just cancel alarm.com. The cop might move away, or someday you might want monitored smokes or whatever. If you really don't want it, you could probably sell it on Ebay. It's been superseded by the IQ4, but the IQ2 is still a very good panel (I've got both).
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I really think the vendor thought with locked in contracts they wouldn't cancel for 2 years was enough incentive to have people spend. I found a neighbor about 3 months ago Who was one of the very early buyers and he replaced his panel and tossed his Qolsys in a box in the garage. Apparently they were monitoring everyone's systems and his kept on reporting not found or something and they kept calling him and he just ignored the calls.
Unfortunately for them he was a county sheriff and was not amused. He finally answered one day and told them who he was and he removed the system and said if they called him again they would not like the outcome. He told me they were installing the panels before a buyer closed so it was here when you moved in. They stopped doing that shortly after they found out what he did. I think their marketing was initially "You have a great system installed and running and this is what you can add to it". The builder was DR Horton so I doubt the vendor was making much, if anything on the installed devices. They were counting on selling a lot more devices to buyers.
By the way, it is a very safe neighborhood. We have 300 homes in the sub division and we have around 45 cops, sheriffs, Florida Fish and Wildlife officers (they are at the top of the food chain in LE down here) and FL Division of Law Enforcement officers who live here. Since 2017 when the first home was sold there has never been any major crime. There may not be a cop across from me forever but there is always quite a few LE vehicles around. My street alone has 3.
I'll hang on to the panel, just take it down. I plan on putting up a Raspberry Pi with a screen and use it to control a dashboard on the Hubitat. I ordered a C-8 pro from Amazon, should have it tomorrow.
Where? We recently moved from Deerfield Beach (Broward County) up to just south of Vero Beach (St. Lucie County). Traffic, crime and general overcrowding and overbuilding has totally ruined S. Florida, in my opinion.
I'm sure there's crime up here too (there's some degree of crime everywhere) but I feel that we're in a very safe neighborhood as well. But I still have an alarm system 
. Honestly, I'm far more concerned about fire and a leaking pipe than I am an intrusion. Especially fire, if something happened while my wife and I were out and something terrible happened to my dog I'd never forgive myself.
C8 is significantly slower that the C7 for firmware updates and reboots in general, roughly twice as long as the C7. I have 2 C7’s and 2 C8’s. If I start the C8’s before the C7’s, the C7’s finish about a minute and a half faster. About a minute twenty vs two minutes thirty.
But other than that the C7 and C8 are the same memory, CPU, etc so everything else is equal. The C8pro has more memory and a faster CPU, so it should be noticeably faster than previous hubs.
I do anticipate upgrading one or both of the C8’s to a pro later this year (waiting for a holiday sale) and replacing the C7’s with the C8’s. My brothers want to get into home automation, and I plan on give them each one of the C7’s.
It's literally the exact same hardware other than the radios.
Comparing a C8 with a bunch of stuff on it to a C7 with much less stuff on it isn't a valid comparison. The only reason a C8 would take longer for anything than a C7 is if the C8 is simply being more heavily utilized.
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Yeah, I know, but it's recognized the update and reboot time is about double for the C8 over the C7. And in my experience the C8 has the same load as the C7 had (since it was migrated from the C8. It was asked early on and they even acknowledged the C8 has a longer update and reboot time.
In my Current set up the C8 has ONLY zwave and Zigbee devices, while once C7 has all the actual automations and rules, and the other has all the cloud integration (only) with no rules or app. those C7's update/reboot in about a minute and a half where the C8 with only Devices (40 total ) takes two and a half to three minutes to update/reboot.
For me, my C7 and C8 hubs upgrade firmware and reboot at approximately the same speed (using the current 2.3.8.xxx release.) The only difference can easily be attributed to the workload on each hub.
My C8 Pro hub definitely boots up in ~half the time of my C8 hub (when it was my primary hub). The C8 Pro now has the vast majority of devices and automations running on it, which definitely slows down its reboot speed a little.
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my c8 pro boots up much faster than the c8 and even faster than the c7 loaded with probably 300 devices..
in addition, the cloud and local backups are also much faster..
as for doorbell notifications i have a cheap zigbee doorbell relay from ebay and it sends me a text the doorbell is ringing.. even before it stops.
That has me thinking. I ended up doing a bunch of reboots yesterday due to te the electrician turning off a circuit breaker before I had a chance to properly shut down. At the time anyway the C8 still seemed somewhat longer than the C7's. I may go home today and reboot everything and run a timer on each hub to compare them. It could be an interesting exercise.
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you have to compare apples to apples.. yes the c7 can boot up faster than the c8 with no devices on it.. it mostly depends on how many devices and apps you have to start up.
i was comparing the speeds on my c7 vs c8 vs c8 pro with the same apps and devices after i upgraded them.. unfortunately i never actually timed them so it is just from my impressions.. same with backups..
So, apparently the C8 has improved considerably and i just did not notice. All running 2.3.8.119.
C7 - Apps - 2:25:94; 0 actual devices (about 50 meshed devices) this hub runs all the automations, rules, and apps.
C8 - Devices - 2:38:90; 69 devices, Mostly Zwave, 6 Zigbee, 3 matter, no automation or rules.
C7 - Cloud - 2:22:87; 16 cloud integrated devices, No rules or automation.
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My C-8 Pro arrived today. I'm installing it now. How often do you guys reboot your hubs? I rarely reboot anything on my network. My 3 servers do a scheduled shutdown once a week at 3am on Saturday morning. But that's about it.
I pretty much only reboot the hub when it gets a FW update...I haven't had to reboot for other issues for a while now.
C-8 Pro is up and running. I had an issue with the thing not allowing me to log in. I had to do a reset with the button on the bottom and a soft reset in Diagnostics to reset the damn thing. Other than that it's working great.
It happened when I enabled WiFi on it so I'm putting that off for now. I did set a static IP on it and did the same with my C-7 so maybe there was a conflict with the two. I did shutdown and unplug the C-7 but still had the login issues with the C-8 Pro.
