Bought this Kwikset 914 front door lock about 5 years ago. It has been working great until yesterday. It does not respond to commands from HE but when I manually open and close the lock, HE reports correctly. Put fresh batteries in with no change.
According to the HE instructions to pair it I press button A (top left) 4 times to begin pairing. I expected the lock to be recognized but the pairing ended without discovering the lock.
I tried resetting it by removing the battery holder, pressed and held the programming button (in the center) for 30 seconds. Tried pairing after the reset with no luck.
After the reset the lock is locking then unlocking 30 seconds later but the event log shows nothing.
I know Kwikset isn’t the best but it is the only brand I have ever bought going back years.
Smart door locks aren’t cheap.
Could this be a bad ZigBee module? I disassembled the lock and didn’t see anything obvious.
This lock was also available with a Z-Wave module but it is the 500 series.
Get another Zigbee module. Battery life and experience overall is better. If you really need a Z-Wave chip, PM me, I have 2 spares, since I replaced mine with Zigbee a few years ago.
@TomG Nothing wrong with kwikset. I have four of them and pretty reliable. Sometimes they get out of sync and I just pull the batteries out- wait a few seconds, and put them back in. Have you tried that?
I have 2 914 that were originally Z-Wave and converted them to Zigbee. Being able to swap chips on these older 914 is the best feature Kwikset could have come up with. The newer 914 models don't have the option to swap chips, which is a shame, because they do go bad. Based on the details provided, it sounds like that is your case.
I bought the Kwikset Obsidian a few years back and absolutely love it! I’d love to see someone picking that one!
It uses the same chips as the 914.
The only downside is that it doesn’t work well with NiMH rechargeable batteries. It does however work very well with Lithium Rechargeables which is what I use now on these.
@TomG Honestly, show me any unpenetrable locks for your house. Where there's a will, there's a way. IMO, the best you can do is just not make it easy. If they showed up at my house with 250 keys to pick it at 3 am and I was 2000 miles away- my Hub would still let me know.
That was just to show Kwikset has only 250 possible combinations.
He has other videos showing how to defeat the Smartkey system.
I agree about not making it easy. Even if I had the world’s strongest lock, all the thief has to do is throw the brick @rlithgow1 has through the window 3 feet to the left.
If the batteries die, there are prongs to put in a 9V battery on the bottom. Just need to keep a full 9V battery outside. If the mechanisms fail on one, I would open another. I have 4 entry points to the house. So not too worried…
The new Zigbee module arrived. HE now recognizes the lock but the motor is hosed too. Apparently when the lock was opening and closing on its own, something in the motor got out of sync. Found the motor on eBay also.
