UPDATE: well, I’ve belatedly realised I’ve left out a key piece of information. I need to buy a pair of locks - one for a regular wooden entrance door, and one for a security screen door in front of it.
Turns out hardly anyone (reputable) makes a decent smart lock for screen doors, except the Yale Unity range, but those aren’t Z-Wave compatible.
Guess we’re sticking with keys for a while longer…
Hey folks - the time’s come for me to consider diving into smart locks.
I’ve been running HA for many years now, and have resisted the urge so far, but a few recent incidents have me thinking smart locks are the next upgrade I need to think of.
My requirements, equal in priority, are:
- Must be usable via HA (automating my locks is the primary reason I’m considering this move)
- Key lock backup (I’m petrified of flat batteries stopping me from entering)
- Ability for HA to report on battery level (see above)
- Local network only (prefer IP, but will consider Z-Wave - anything that calls home in the cloud is a hard no)
- Code and/or fingerprint entry (unique code per person, at least 6 codes)
I say “consider Z-Wave” as I don’t currently utilise any Z-Wave devices. The main reason for this is that I run HA (Home Assistant) on a (heh!) HA (high availability) Proxmox setup, and I hadn’t sat down to think through how that would work with a Z-Wave USB hub across two nodes.
But, after some cursory research, it seems there’s enough options out there that will let me control Z-Wave remotely via MQTT, so I can use one of my RasPis to host a Z-Wave hub just fine.
There’s been plenty of positive comments on other posts regarding Schlage’s locks, so I’ll probably start my research there. But I’m very keen to hear of anyone’s experiences with any smart lock brands - good or bad - to help guide my research.
While I’m at it, I’m open to recommendations on a Z-Wave hub. I have zero Z-Wave experience, but I gather it’s reasonably straightforward to use. Simple enough requirements:
- Usable on a RasPi running Rasbian
- Decent enough range - has to reach the smart locks through a couple of internal walls, from the garage to the front door (about 6m/20ft)
Cheers in advance for any advice offered!
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I have had Zwave Yale locks for almost 10 years now and am pretty happy with them. I have the assure SL (mentionned in another comment) on 3 doors right now and they are rock solid.
The battery is reported to Zwave but you will also get some beeping and flashing on the lock itself when the battery gets low, so even if you don’t see it in HA it is hard to miss and end up with a dead battery.
As a side note, I always bought the push button variant of those locks and stayed away from the touch pad version. Living in Canada it seemed like a bad choice to deal with touchpads in the winter with the gloves and snow possibly melting on it.
Thanks for this. Yale was also on my list to look into.
I had the Yale deadbolts at my last house: front door had key backup, backdoor had just keypad. Worked phenomenally, and you can set codes on the fly pretty easily. We had a pet sitter often, so i just created a pin then had it disable when they weren’t coming over.
I didn’t know about Yale. It’s bluetooth only?
There’s a component you can buy to replace the Bluetooth or WiFi module, which is a little bit of a pain
Fantastic. Thank you. Yale was second on my list to research.
I can’t speak to the quality of actual locksets or recommended any products, but LockPickingLawyer on YouTube has a number of short videos discussing smart locks. My impression is most of them are trash at just being a lock. The ones made by traditional lockset manufacturers probably aren’t generally good at being smart, but I’ve been wrong about major brands’ commitment to open standards before.
Assuming you can find a decent lock that talks Z-Wave, I think you’re on the right track with Zwave2MQTT and a USB dongle. I’d be squeamish about using a Pi specifically in a mission critical security control system for a couple of reasons (reliability, complexity, WiFi interference), but as long as you have keyed backup, it’ll probably be OK.
I’ll leave it to others to recommend the locks, but as I mentioned in another post her, most battery operated Z-Wave devices, in my experience, report their battery life. Most of mine seem to go from 100% to 70% to dead in about a day though, so accuracy might be hit & miss.
Maybe just leave one door with an old school keyed lockset as a plan B.
Yeah, I’m aiming at quality lock over quality smart. As long as I can get remote lock/unlock going, the smarts will be built into my HA/Node-RED automations.
Good point re keyed lock. I won’t be changing my back door locks, so can always jump a fence if I get desperate.
I’ve had three Yale deadbolts for 6+ years and I’ve never had an issue to where I wished they had a keyway. I love them.
Yale with whatever module you find suitable. I use the zwave module.
No keyhole for me. Takes picking out of the equation, and the whole point is to not have a key.
Plenty of warning for low batteries. Batteries last a while, especially if you use Lithium type.
Worst case you can use a 9v battery to jump it from outside.
Yale’s Assure SL doesn’t have a key, but you can power it externally with a 9v battery. (And, keys are just another failure point). They also make some keyed variants.
It out of the box doesn’t have any network capability. You can plug in a zigbee or Wifi module to give it connectivity.
Zigbee support is pretty primitive. Basic functionality works fine. Lock, unlock etc. afaik, you can do whatever the unit can do through zigbee commands but I’ve not seen (nor really looked) for a usable interface to it.
[edit] realised I mixed up zwave and zigbee.
The Schlage HA integration states that it relies on the cloud (cloud polling), so they go against your fourth point.
I am also interested in something like this for later down the line.
Maybe, but I’ve read some posts that state some Schlage locks can be entirely controlled through Z-Wave without needing cloud access.
But, that may mean I don’t get battery monitoring that way.
I have Schlage locks integrated via Z-Wave. All local, can poll for battery levels, supports physical key unlocks ( and can differentiate logging events between key, code, and HA service unlocks)
I’m happy with the capabilities.
Awesome feedback. Thanks for that.
Do you happen to know if all Schlage smart locks support the same features, or only a specific model range?
I think as long as the model you are looking for supports Z-Wave, you’re good.
My battery operated Z-Wave sensors all report their battery life. You’d need to dig into the integration docs to know for sure but frankly I’d be surprised if they didn’t report it as an entity.
