Resideo Debt Refinancing; Qolsys IQ Remote Battery; August Smart Lock Pro w/ HomeKit

Alarm Grid is taking a very quick look at three (3) miscellaneous security topics today, including Resideo completing a refinancing of their debt, the Qolsys IQ Remote battery, and some clarification regarding the August Smart Lock Pro when used with Apple HomeKit. Let's get started!

Resideo, the maker of the Honeywell Lyric Controller and the Honeywell Home PROA7PLUS, announced that the company has completed some important refinancing of their debt. The move should certainly improve the financial outlook for Resideo moving forward. As a result of the refinancing, the company has received upgrades to their credit ratings from both Moody's and S&P. More information is available here.

Qolsys has confirmed that the battery inside the Qolsys IQ Remote Touchscreen Keypad for the Qolsys IQ Panel 2 Plus Security System is non-replaceable. Once the battery has reached its end of life, the keypad can continue to be used, but there will be some drawbacks. The keypad will show a chronic low-battery warning that cannot be cleared, and any AC power loss from an electrical outage or the transformer being unplugged will cause the keypad to immediately power off. Alarm Grid has already reached out to Qolsys, suggesting that future iterations of the keypad be fitted with a replaceable battery.

Lastly, we have an important clarification regarding the August Smart Lock Pro when used with Apple HomeKit. We had mistakenly believed that the August Smart Lock Pro was able to communicate and integrate with the Apple HomeKit servers across WIFI by using the optional August Connect WIFI Bridge. That is not true, and the only way for the August Smart Lock Pro to communicate with HomeKit is by being within BlueTooth range (about 15 feet) of a dedicated HomeKit Hub (iPad, AppleTV Gen 4 or Higher, or Apple HomePod).

Instead, the Connect WIFI Bridge is only used to get the August Smart Lock Pro online so that it can be controlled remotely from virtually anywhere using the August Home App while the user is outside normal BlueTooth Range. A bundled package that includes both the August Smart Lock Pro and the Connect WIFI Bridge is available here. Alarm Grid apologizes for any inconvenience that may have resulted from our misinformation stating that the August Smart Lock Pro could use the Connect WIFI Bridge to communicate with the Apple HomeKit Servers. We are currently working to update our content to correct for this misunderstanding. If you see any existing content on our website stating that the Connect Bridge can facilitate communication between the Smart Lock Pro and HomeKit, then please understand that such information is false, and we are working to revise this content as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about the products on our website or about our alarm monitoring services, please contact us via email at support@alarmgrid.com. We are here to check your emails from 9am to 8pm ET M-F. We look forward to hearing from you!