August Pro Z-Wave issue

I have/had the same problem. The August Pro is the only device I have issues with (after 2.2.4), which includes 36 Z-wave devices of various manufacturers. I could get the lock to pair, and work well for short periods of time, then things would go crazy with severe battery drain and unresponsiveness. I didn't have issues with my Smartthings, which I migrated from.

I didn't want to purchase the wifi bridge from August, so I dusted off my Smartthings, paired it to the August lock, and then installed Hubconnect. So now, I control the August lock from Hubitat, which communicates to Smartthings, which then communicates with the lock. Very kludgy, but it works and is reliable without battery drain. This experience makes me think there is still an issue with the Hubitat driver for the Pro. I didn't have any luck with the Generic Z-Wave lock either.

The ‘Generic Z-Wave Lock’ driver doesn't work any better.

Appreciate the workaround suggestions but I'd prefer to get this working as it should.

Manually changing the lock's state appears to 'reconnect' it with HE which can then, for the time being, control the lock.

Should I turn on 'Hub Mesh enabled'? I don't know what this does.

Although I have both 'debug logging' and 'descriptive Text logging' enabled,

when I click 'Lock' on the device page, no logs are generated.

@mike.maxwell Does the absence of HE logs indicate there is an issue with the driver?

The opposite actually, if there are no logs when executing commands from the driver or when activating the device physically then it's an issue with the device and or mesh...

@Busthead What firmware version is your lock on? I had the same issues and after a lot of back and forth with August, they downgraded my firmware to 1.59.0-1.8.15. That was a year and a half ago and my lock has functioned perfectly since (even moving it from a C3 to a C7 paired with S2 security).

1.59.0-2.0.1

I've submitted a request to August to downgrade my firmware to 1.59.0-1.8.15 or upgrade to a beta version if there is a fix for this known issue. Will report back.

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Strangeness.

I requested a firmware downgrade (or upgrade to beta firmware that addresses the Z-Wave connectivity issue) and August told me they no longer have that ability.

I requested escalation to the next tier of support. They also stated that they are no longer able to downgrade firmware.

Then my lock started working...

I didn't change any settings or add any new devices; it just started working out-of-the-blue.

I verified via the August iOS app that the lock's firmware had not changed.

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Weird but positive outcome. I hope it continues to work for you!

My 2 August Pro locks are doing the same things as others. After a period of time they will go offline and only work from Hubitat over zwave if they are manually moved or triggered from the August app. After they start working for a short time. I opened a support ticket with August and after a few days of back and forth they acknowledged the issue and that the older firmware would fix it, but they refused to downgrade the lock because of a security issue. After some more back and forth they told me that because the lock works from the August app that I need to work with Hubitat to fix the issue. That or move to SmartThings and do cloud to cloud. They stopped replying after I called out that they are knowingly selling this lock as zwave compatible and know there are issues with it but refuse to fix it.

What are the chances this can even be fixed by Hubitat? All my other zwave devices are working great. I am still within my 30 day return window. Should I just send them back? I bought these because I am in an apartment and cannot change the locks so this was an easy workaround.

I've been having similar issues with my August Pro as well. It worked great for the first few months but after a firmware upgrade it was all downhill. It would work via Z-wave only intermittently, typically after using the August app or manually controlling the lock, but then it would stop responding to Z-wave commands after a few hours. Battery life deteriorated as well, and it's behavior got worse as the batteries drained. I tried factory resetting and now I wish I hadn't. I can't get hubitat to see anything but the keyWe lock, and functionality is zero. I've tried the excluding, resetting, including cycle several times, using two devices, one for August app and one for hubitat, and the results are always the same. I've been going back and forth with August for the last few days trying to roll back my firmware with no luck, they don't want to budge on that now, despite doing it for others.

I was a longtime August Pro user and I love the lock when it worked. However, between the Z-Wave issues, the mechanical defects and, the straw that broke the camel's back, randomly showing that the lock was in an unlock position but physically hadn't moved from the lock position. The only way to correct that was to remove the battery and put the battery back into the lock. I've had my lock replaced three separate occasions and never had long-term Success With It. The best advice would be used St the handle the August lock (WiFi Integration) and then use Hub connect to control it.

I have switched over to the Alfred lock recently, and so far it's been great. Z-Wave works perfectly and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are seamless.

how do you connect smart things and Habitat? with regards to the lock?

I used [RELEASE] HubConnect - Share Devices across Multiple Hubs (even SmartThings!) - Developers / Code Share - Hubitat
I have a special drive for the august lock. @Csteele was very helpful get this to work for me.

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@jsarcone could you help me out with the custom driver for august lock? pretty please :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Hi @k2rm , so your August lock is connected to your ST hub via z-wave? And there is no battery drain? But there is battery drain if connected z-wave to hubitat?

Yes, no battery drain and very reliable operation connecting by zwave to SmartThings. I just could never get it to work correctly with direct hubitat communication and drivers. Severe battery drain and communication problems after pairing with Hubitat.

The other bonus by running it through Smartthings and hubconnect is that I can put widgets on my phone with smartthings to easily access lock and unlock icons, yet still run automations through hubconnect.

Considering stable performance on Smartthings, but not Hubitat, leads me to believe it is an incompatibility issue on Hubitat's side.

Thanks for the info @k2rm ! Did you create a custom driver for the lock? Or did the hubconnect universal one work just fine? If it's custom, could you please share? Thanks in advance!

The built in hubconnect drivers worked great

So its been a while since last post. Has anyone figured out why this is so unreliable via Hubitat?

Lock Firmware 1.59.0-2.0.4

Lock Data:

  • deviceType: 1
  • zwaveSecurePairingComplete: true
  • inClusters: 0x5E,0x55,0x98,0x9F
  • zwNodeInfo: 53 DC 84 04 40 03 5E 55 98 9F 68 23 F1 00 86 72 5A 73 80 62 85 5C 71 8E 59 6C 7A
  • secureInClusters: 0x86,0x72,0x5A,0x73,0x80,0x62,0x85,0x71,0x8E,0x59,0x6C,0x7A
  • deviceId: 1
  • S2: 132
  • manufacturer: 831

Would love to get this working, right now its paired to homekit via BTLE and never has an issue but Zwave is disconnected at least once or twice a day and until manually locked/unlocked or use August app hubitat has issues with controlling this device.

@bjcowles has looked into this substantially. Recent versions of August's z-wave firmware for this lock are buggy, causing the locks to be unreliable with Hubitat or any other z-wave controller (obviously HomeKit via BTLE is z-wave independent).

This is one of @bjcowles posts on the topic:

So essentially any updates past 1.59.0-1.8.15 compromise the function of this lock.

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I have a theory. Unfortunately, without the proper tools I can't provide concrete proof. I played with the lock more than I'd like to admit, and watching the Z-Wave logs led me to believe that later firmware lowers the power of the chip when the lock is not being used. This could have been done to help battery life or maybe they saw it as a way minimize the impact of their admittedly flawed security.

I supplied them with the logs showing how RSSI values and the number of route changes correspond to whether the lock has been manually "awakened" or not. Their response was basically, "Thanks, our engineers appreciate the info but we will not roll back your firmware for security reasons, We can offer you a discount on a Connect bridge or a new Yale lock." I have had zero issues with the Danalock V3 that replaced the August.

BTW, This issue is not exclusive to HE. Plenty of discussions about it in ST's forum, Reddit, Github, Homeseer, and more.

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