Hi, this is my first post after a few weeks of messing with home automation. Besides the Hubitat, I have a ring alarm system, 6 Schlage z-wave plus locks, about 30 Hue bulbs (and bridge), and 20 Inovelli Red-Series On/Off switches. I'm slowly getting things going after lots of trial and error and this weekend I all of a sudden am having some issues with my locks. The batteries are going dead in under 24 hours. Earlier this week I setup some rules and now have my Inovelli switches flashing notifications if the locks are unlocked between certain hours. I also had a rule that between certain hours checks every 15 minutes if the locks are unlocked and if so, locks them. This was working fine and then since yesterday, a lock will drain a new set of Energizers in about 12 hours. Any thoughts about what could be causing this? I also was playing around with dashboards a bit the past couple of days, but haven't really done much with them....not sure if they could be having some sort of affect?
A general question deals with how the Schlage locks fit into the Z-Wave mesh. I know I probably need to do a "Repair" on my Z-Wave mesh through the Hubitat settings and that will re-map the network to make the switches communicate more efficiently. The Schlage locks are integrated directly with Ring but show up in Hubitat since I'm using the Ring integration App. Do the locks rely solely on Ring Range Extenders? Or can they take advantage of the Inovelli switches which server as repeaters? Do the locks get mapped like the Inovelli switches and benefit from a Z-Wave repair? I ask since I've read on here how if the locks are having trouble with signal they can drain the battery.
No idea what would be causing a drain on the locks that quickly, even in a poor z-wave mesh network. However, I suspect you're on the right track.
While I don't generally use Schlage locks (I have one at a tenant property working fine), I use Kwikset, their use in a z-wave network is effectively the same.
The locks should join and act like most any Z-wave device. They will join your mesh network and work through a repeater like any other Z-Wave device. I'm not sure how they fit into the Ring integration, my Ring usage stops at cameras, floodlights, and doorbells.
However if you're integrating them directly with Ring, and they are shared into Hubitat, it would appear you're actually running two separate Z-Wave mesh networks, one with Ring and one with HE.
The Schlage locks will integrate directly with HE just fine. There is a Schlage lock driver and a generic Z-Wave lock driver, either should work.
I would start by collapsing your Z-Wave into a single network, however you may have to balance that with what functionality Ring provides. There are likely others out there that can add more based on the Ring side of the equation.
As @demillerusn points out, you actually have two zwave networks, one controlled by Ring and one by HE. If you have devices paired to your ring zwave network, I do not believe they will benefit from repeaters attached to your HE network. Likewise if your ring repeaters are paired with your ring controller they will act as repeaters only for the ring devices and not for devices paired to your HE. A repair on your HE network (not recommended anyway, though repairing individual devices can help) will have no effect on your ring-paired devices.
I'm not an expert on Schlage locks but draining batteries that quickly even on a lousy zwave network sounds pretty extreme. But maybe if they're having to retry a lot? Or maybe for some reason when you lock them they're having to try several times and using juice? Not sure what diagnostic options you have available from Ring... lots on the HE side but unless the locks are paired (included) on the HE zwave network those won't help.
Also a zwave repair in general may or may not improve the quality of the zwave mesh. Lots of discussion about that question elsewhere!
You might try as @demillerusn suggests removing the locks from ring and controlling them directly with HE, but perhaps do it with one and see. ZWave locks can be finicky. But with 20 switches on the HE network (please confirm they ARE on the HE network) you should have a pretty solid mesh.
Take a look at the auto-lock community-supported app by @lewis.heidrick . It does some really cool lock stuff and can save you the effort of writing lots of RM rules.
First, as others have said, you seem to have two Z-Wave networks, one for Ring and one for Hubitat. I don’t have a Ring system, so I can’t speak to that.
I do have two Schlage BE469ZP Z-Wave Plus locks paired to my Hubitat mesh. They used to be BE469NX (Z-Wave non-plus), but I replaced the electronics modules and converted them to BE469ZP.
The reason I converted them was that the battery life was about 3 months with S0 pairing to my Hubitat C-5. The C-5 cannot do the newer S2 secure protocol that the C-7 does, and the S2 protocol uses 1/3 the packets that S0 does.
I now see just over a year battery life on the Schlage locks.
I don’t know how recent your Ring system is, so I don’t know whether it is pairing S0 or S2.
One other point. The Schlage locks need a beaming repeater near them because they are FLiRS devices. I use Ring Alarm Extender v2 devices. Even if you have the Ring extenders, they will need to be paired to the Hubitat mesh, not Ring.
Finally, some early versions of Schlage lock firmware have short battery life. My locks have versions 0.11.0 and 0.10.9and work fine.
Thank you for all the quick replies...and yes, jumping right in
I have included and excluded my Inovelli switches a few times over the past couple of weeks while experimenting. After reading the suggested article, I'm surprise my network works at all. Not only is my Hubitat hub in the basement, its about 15' from being in the corner, and its sitting on my metal server rack I have it plugged directly into my switch. There was no specific order involved when I was including my switches. So, I'm thinking I should move the hub upstairs to the main level (although there will be Inovelli switches in the basement eventually after finishing the basement). If I do so, how do I go about optimizing my switches/repeaters without having to exclude and include them again? Should I do an individual repair one switch at a time, starting with the one closest to the new hub location and working my way outwards?
I added the suggested app and it looks really cool...definitely would have saved me some time (but I've learned a lot) and it has some great features....I will be switching to use it instead of my own rules.
I have no idea about the firmware of my Schlage Connect locks. I looked in the settings for them in the Ring app and it simply says "Up to Date" for the firmware. I look at the "Ring Virtual Lock" device created in Hubitat with the Ring integration app and it says the firmware is "3.3" which doesn't look anything like what @672southmain says his firmware is. The Schlage Home app apparently only works with their Encode and Sense locks.
I like the idea of moving the locks off of the Ring network, but I think that will make life more difficult for me with the wife If she wants to see whether a door is locked, or lock/unlock one with her phone, using the Ring app is about all I can expect. Having to do anything more complex with Hubitat and such won't go over very well. I wish I had never integrated them with Ring then she wouldn't have seen how nicely they tie in with the Ring app.
I didn't quite follow this:
One other point. The Schlage locks need a beaming repeater near them because they are FLiRS devices. I use Ring Alarm Extender v2 devices. Even if you have the Ring extenders, they will need to be paired to the Hubitat mesh, not Ring.
Are Ring extenders "beaming" repeaters? I'm guessing Inovelli switches are not? Is this saying that you can use Ring extenders even when including the locks directly in the Hubitat Z-Wave mesh and not adding them to Ring?
Yes. That’s one reason I use them. To see the firmware level, look at the sticker on your manual or on the electronics module in your lock. It’s on the sticker with your default codes.
Yeah I did the same thing. Started setting things up, then read the article and thought "oh geez no wonder!" It's worth the time while your network is young to step back and do it right. There's a similar one for Zigbee networks, by the way.
If you included and excluded and included a lot of devices while setting up your network I'm gonna introduce you to another concept in ZWave networking: the ghost. A ghost is a zwave device that shows up in your zwave details twice, once as the "real" device that shows routes and other details, and once as a "ghost" that shows none of that. The ghost device will cause reliability problems so I'd stop now and see if you have any. There are lots of other articles about getting rid of ghosts but stop and check now before you go crazy.
While the guides can really help you get going strong, resetting everything isn't really necessary to move your hub. Just find a good place central to your home and leave it unplugged for at least 20 minutes. This will put the devices into panic mode to find a new route to the hub. Being centrally located, it should rebuild the mesh pretty quickly. After you move the hub, don't make any more modifications to the mesh for about 3 days so all the routes settle in.
For the locks, they eat up batteries when they're awake. It's better to leave them alone. Constantly polling them for status or relocks will waste a lot of battery. Additionally those schlage locks have a high and low power mode. If they bind up they go into high power mode to try and force the bolt closed which can use 10x more battery. The bolt should freely lock and unlock without hitting anything. Try locking and unlocking it by hand and if you feel it "clunk" into something while locking, check to see that the door is properly aligned. There are a ton of how to videos about how to do this any only takes a few minutes to adjust each door.
@dpjonesdp I'll also throw in, post a screenshot of your z-wave settings page so we can get a look at things. Keeping beaming repeaters (like the ring 2 extenders) will help a lot on batteries. I have 3 of these locks and they work well for me (others have had issues).
Sorry for the delay in responding...my son and I have been battling pretty bad cases of poison Ivy and I haven't felt like messing with things too much. I did figure out what was going on with my locks.
First issue was me assuming the batteries were dead when the locks would stop working. With them not working and seeing lots of events due to a mistake I made in my rules, I thought that had to be it. I kept wondering why I never saw a low battery indication but assumed the battery status wasn't reporting correctly.
I went to put in another new set of batteries and the lock didn't work at all. This made me look closer at things and start checking for a bad connection. I noticed that if I pushed down on one side of the 9-volt style connector to the battery pack that it worked. I took the little top off of the connector and could see the wire was soldered just fine so I kept looking. It turns out that on 3 of my 6 locks the male post on the battery pack doesn't make good contact with the batter terminal that sits right below it. I verified this with my meter and couldn't believe how crappy the design/quality of this was from such an expensive lock.
I don't know whether to be embarrassed with my solution or not, but I cut out 6 slim strips of foil and folded them over to make 6 small foil spacers (for lack of a better term) and put them in between the bottom of the male post and the battery terminal. I made sure they are nice and tidy and secure so they can't fall out or anything. Since doing this, I have had no issues with the locks.
I tried uploading pictures but it tells me I can't embed media items in a post??
Thanks again for all the responses....I'm learning a lot!
