How to Install or Swap the Legacy RF Daughter Card in a Qolsys IQ Panel 5

The Qolsys IQ Panel 5 ships with PowerG built in and one legacy radio card for the older wireless sensors already in a house: 319.5 MHz for Qolsys and Interlogix, 345 MHz for Honeywell and 2GIG, or 433 MHz for DSC. When the card in the box is not the one the house needs, you swap it. The swap is a ten-minute job, and almost every problem we have seen with it comes from one of five mistakes. Here is the procedure the way Qolsys documents it, with the mistakes called out.

Watch it in 30 seconds

Qolsys’s own clip of the card going in: slot, screw, antenna. It skips the power-down and the test, which is where the problems come from, so read on. Video by Qolsys.

The procedure

1. Power the panel down from the menu. Swipe down from the top of the screen, tap Settings, then Advanced Settings, enter the installer or dealer code, and tap Power Down. Wait for the screen and the LED to go dark. Then unplug the power supply. Leave the battery connected; Qolsys does not require disconnecting it for this job, and disconnecting it without the power-down sequence is what causes incorrect battery readings later.
2. Take the panel off its backplate. The locking screw is on the bottom edge of the panel, under a retention spring. Loosen it with the small Phillips, swing the bottom of the panel out and lift it off the top latches of the SmartMount. On a table stand, same screw, same motion.
3. Find the legacy RF slot. It is the small card slot on the main board labelled EXT1, and if a card is already fitted you will see it there with a white antenna wire. The other expansion slot is for the Ethernet card or a Zigbee card; a legacy RF card does not go there.
4. Remove the old card, if there is one. Undo its single locking screw, lift straight up, and set the antenna wire aside. Do not pull by the antenna.
5. Seat the new card. Line up every pin on the underside of the card with the header on the board, check that no pin is hanging off the end of the row, and press straight down until it is fully home. A half-seated card is the most common failure, and it usually comes from the card sitting one pin-row off.
6. Fit the card’s locking screw and snug it. It holds the card against vibration and wall tamper, and the panel will fail its own card test intermittently without it.
7. Route the antenna and close up. Feed the white antenna wire out through the RF antenna hole in the backplate before you latch the panel, then hook the top of the panel onto the backplate, swing it down and press it flat. If the antenna is pinched between panel and plate, the sensors on that frequency will show weak signal or none.
8. Tighten the bottom locking screw, reconnect power, and power up. Plug the supply back in, then press and hold the power button on the right side of the panel for three seconds. Boot takes a minute or two.
9. Run the Daughter Cards Test. Swipe down, Settings, Advanced Settings, enter the code, System Tests, Daughter Cards Test. Tap Run on the card. The test can take a couple of minutes and returns Pass or Fail. Empty slots are greyed out, so if the slot you just filled is grey, the card is not making contact.
10. Pair a sensor on the new frequency. Settings, Advanced Settings, Installation, Devices, Security Sensors, Auto Learn Sensor, then trip the sensor. On 345 MHz sensors the panel will add a Loop field, which is expected.

The five mistakes, in the order we see them

• Powering down by pulling the plug. Always the menu first. The manual puts it bluntly: skipping the sequence can cause data corruption or panel failure.
• Card one row off. It looks seated and it is not. Lift it and look at the header from the side; every pin should have a hole.
• Antenna pinched or left inside. The card tests Pass and the sensors still will not enroll from across the room. Reopen and route the wire through the hole in the backplate.
• Wrong frequency. A 345 card will never hear a DSC contact. Check the sensor brand before ordering the card, and remember the panel only runs one legacy band at a time.
• Testing too soon. Give the panel its full boot, then run the Daughter Cards Test. If it fails, Qolsys’s own advice is to reseat the card, reboot, and run it again. If it fails twice with a good seat, the card is bad.

Why this comes up on takeovers

Most of the time we install an IQ Panel 5 into a house that already has an alarm. The windows and doors are wired to contacts someone else installed, or fitted with wireless sensors from the previous panel, and nobody wants to pay to replace sensors that work. The right legacy card lets the new panel hear them, so a takeover is a panel swap and an afternoon of enrolling rather than a rewire. New sensors we add are PowerG, which is on the main board and needs no card at all. If you are a homeowner reading this to understand what the technician is doing behind the panel, that is the whole story; if your system was installed by someone else and you are not sure what frequency your sensors are, we can take it over and tell you.

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Shield Low Voltage installs and services Qolsys IQ Panel systems with Alarm.com monitoring across Utah County, Salt Lake County and the Wasatch Back. Related: how to reboot an IQ Panel and replacing the IQ Panel battery.