comment on Resideo's Lyric panel goes dark leaving dealers high and dry June 2, 2026

KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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comment on Resideo's Lyric panel goes dark leaving dealers high and dry
June 2, 2026

comment on Resideo's Lyric panel goes dark leaving dealers high and dry from article on May 7, 2026
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Ken,
   When are alarm dealers going to wake up, smell the coffee and realize that its 2026? Maybe never but we can only hope.
   I called my contacts at Resideo and got a very interesting set of answers to my questions and these are my conclusions:
   There is no catastrophic widespread failure of the panels, just the remote connection of the remote programing function. The remote connection was enabled by a third party enhanced security vendor who managed the software certificates to insure the highest level of security for the remote sessions. This third party decided to cease operations with little to no notice to Resideo and gave no viable path to maintain the current system or convert to something else.
   All of which seem perfectly understandable to a reasonable person in this day and age of new and ever-changing technology CONSIDERING that the panels in question have not been out of production for 10 or so years.
   But it also led me to think about the following
   When did we in this industry in our sales material (or in your excellent contracts) ever state the life expectancy of the equipment we sell?
   When did any other manufacturer in our industry ever state that the equipment they sell had a lifetime warranty without stating what the expected lifetime is?
   With the exception of my friend of 44 years Alan Forman (Altronix) who warrantees almost everything forever, the best I can recall is everything that we buy and resell has a "limited warranty" to cover only workmanship in the manufacturing process.
   Resideo did not charge an on-going fee for access to the remote download function, so did Resideo have a "duty" to maintain it past the existence of the vendor? I don't think so and could be an issue only if Resideo made representations that it would last until XX but as you always say, I am not an attorney.
   Which brings me to my final thought which I have shared here before, nothing in the consumer electronics space is expected to last forever.
   Cell phones, I loved my blackberry. Gone, along with the last 20 plus versions of my Samsung smartphone.
   Large format TV's. Now sell for less than $1000.00
   Computer screens, again large format for under $200.00
   We rebuild and restore classic muscle cars, but no one is going to rebuild a Tesla 50 years from now.
   Your daily column is a great place for information on business practices, but the occasional belly aching of one-sided information is tiresome. If it's not a dealer it's a manufacturer picking on another for market share.
   If I was Jeff, or any other dealer, I would see this as an opportunity to upsell the existing customer on the new features or interfaces of today's panels which include comfort controls such as lighting, HVAC, remote locks, VIDEO, and more. If the customer said, "well you used to do it remotely" I would see this as the opportunity that it really is and send a salesperson that same day or the next, who could add or delete a user code from the keypad (for a service call fee, because we do nothing for nothing) or sell them a new system.
   Ken, If today's dealer doesn't appear to be as technically advanced as the simple alarm company they are going to get smoked in the marketplace. This is not about Resideo, a manufacturer or a central station, it's about the dealer and understanding the business they are in rather than sitting around and counting their RMR and bitching about their attrition and competition.
Bart A. Didden. President
U.S.A. Central Station Alarm Corp.
Port Chester, NY
Milford, CT
St. Paul, MN
Pasco, WA
877-872-1266
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another comment
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Ken
   Go figure that’s why we dumped Honeywell products along time ago. Honeywell is bad for this industry.
Mike S
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another comment

Ken,
I hope all is well. I just read your newsletter regarding Resideo's Lyric Alarm Systems.
  The information provided to you was not 100% accurate.
  Resideo did send out notice on March 18, 2026 of the upcoming changes to the Lyric system and on April 6, 2026 they sent out a second notice which seemed to be an attempt to clarify what services will be affected on the system as the first notice was not entirely clear.
Darren P. Faivre
Gold Coast Audio Video, Inc.
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another comment
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Ken
Regarding the Resideo Lyric issue. There was actually a first notice that went out in March, dated March 17, 2026 (I received it in my email on Wednesday, March 18), so Resideo gave roughly a one month notice. This notice gives a bit of information about what's at issue. The Lyric panel itself is no longer capable of authenticating to the AlarmNet360 server. A month is not a long time for this type of notice, admittedly, but it's better than 9 days.
Knowing Resideo, they'll likely offer incentives to get these systems updated to a PRO Series panel. Any Lyric SiX Series Sensor will work with a PROA7 or PROA7PLUS. When it pairs with the new panel, it receives a firmware update that turns the old sensor into a PROSIX sensor (minus any hardware differences, obviously).
  Here at Alarm Grid, we knew it was only a matter of time, so about a year ago I wrote a series of posts about preparing for the eventual Lyric end-of-life. You can see a link to those here: https://www.alarmgrid.com/blog/preparing-for-the-eventual-lyric-end-of-life-part-1
Julia Ross
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Response
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   I think the problem, and complaint, was that the manufacturer only gave 9 days notice of the equipment going dark. Looks like there may have been more notice, according to Darren and Julia, but the dealer who complained had a lot of accounts and apparently now needs more time to be reprogram.   If devices need to be changed in subscriber systems that could be a lot of work for tech starved alarm companies.
   Equipment and services become obsolete; the K&K Contracts provide for that. However there is usually some warning if equipment, all of the equipment, is going dark in 9 days. Your investigation that Resideo has caught off-guard just like the dealers is a reasonable explanation for why more notice wasn't provided. I don't know that it makes it any easier for the dealer who has to visit every site. These dealers were caught off-guard, surprised. Just as you seem to be when I remind you that you're "not an attorney".
   Thank you for explaining Resideo's difficulty. It might be a lesson to be learned about putting all your eggs in one basket, the wrong basket.
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com