Ultraloq Pro ZWave Smart Deadbolt Open/Closed Status

@bertabcd1234 has just posted a detailed review, elsewhere on the Hubitat Community, describing this lock and its use with Hubitat. Thought it would appropriate to link to his post here:

I also replied in that thread

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I got this reply fromm Ultraloq. they claim problem is fixed. I'm unsure how to reset z-wave device. I plan on removing the adding again.

Do I need to go into exclusion mode?
Do I need to delete device from any existing rules?

Oct 23, 2022, 23:57 PDT

Hi Carl,

Now the problem should be fixed already... If you re-set up your device with Hubtait, does the problem persists?
How to connect U-Bolt Z-Wave and U-Bolt Pro Z-Wave with Hubitat?

Yikes! Yea I recently bought a 2nd one of these and had a ton of issues with the z wave side. The first one has worked fine. I tried factory resetting the lock and it basically wouldnā€™t. Contacted support, emails back and forth for a week and they sent me another one. Having to do that makes me nervous given the issues I had. Their app wouldnā€™t even recognize it as a z wave pro lock in the end. And the keypad stopped working after working initially ā€¦. I would think there would be a firmware update if they fixed something?

Did u ever end up removing and re adding your lock to see if the contact sensor part worked?

I never got any answers from Ultraloq, except to say the update was in testing. I gave up and bought a separate door sensor. Which works good enough for me.

I actually really like this lock. It does everything I need. Fingerprint is not always great, but usually opens within 3 swipes.

The Z-Wave features of the lock are weak. You can lock, unlock and apparently you can manage User Codes over Hubitat, but I've never really tried it. The Door status (Open/Closed) is not accessible via Z-Wave, which I feel is falsely advertised bordering on fraudulent.

I've had a ticket open with U-Tec for over 6 months. Initially, I was told U-Tec was working on it. Then that they've fixed it, and I was doing something wrong, Then they hadn't fixed it. Recently they offered me a Ultraloq WiFi Bridge which I accepted but don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I figure Iā€™ll leave it when I sell the house so I can take my Hubitat with me.

I have reported the following issues to U-Tec because I felt they were misleading.

  1. In the Ultraloq U-Bolt Z-Wave, Z-Wave Specification Manual V1.2; it clearly states that Door Condition, Open/Closed and Locked/Unlocked are reported via Z-Wave.
    My experience is that this is UNTRUE?

  2. In the product webpage product description
    https://u-tec.com/products/ultraloq-u-bolt-pro-series,
    Throughout the page U-Tec has 1 and 2. I couldn't find what these reference.

The page shows a video title referring to all U-Bolt Pro Series locks.
The video implies remote access to the Door open status from a distance (1:07) ā€˜If someone leaves the door open Iā€™ll get a notification on my phoneā€. I couldn't find this option when connected to Z-Wave. I suspect it requires the WiFi Bridge.
Only the first frame of the video says the video describes the Wi-Fi version.

  1. The U-Bolt Series is described as ā€˜Control From Anywhereā€™, and
    ā€˜No more wondering if your door is locked and Closedā€™. The Z-Wave lock can't let me know whether or not my door is closed from anywhere.

  2. In the list of Features for Pro-Z-Wave, U-Tec includes 'Door Status', & 'Compatible with Z-Wave Hubs'. This is simply untrue since Door Status is not available on Hubitat.

But all that aside, I eventually bought a Z-Wave door sensor and wrote some simple code in Hubitat to get it to Auto Lock, and notify me if someone opened the door without unlocking it (kicked the door down). So overall I'm pleased with how the lock works.

One minor but annoying thing about the lock is that it sends a battery check to the Hubitat log every 5 minutes, and there are 3 lines of Hubitat log entries for each battery check. So the Hubitat log contains 864 lines (12x24x3) of battery checks every day. It is extremely difficult to use the Hubitat Log to find anything meaningful. But the U-Tec app makes this very easy.

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Anyone with a U bolt pro zwave lock actually seen the battery report anything other than 100? Asking bc our back door one had been beeping a lot which from what I understand is weak batteries. It shows nothing than but 100 in the logs every five minutes haha.

I have the Z-Wave version too, and like you, Iā€™m very upset that the door open/closed isnā€™t reported. I changed my batteries some months ago, and the good news is that it is still working fine. The bad news, like you, is that it is showing 100% in Hubitat, which canā€™t possibly be true this long into my last battery change.

Okay I was wandering bc I have 2. And both have always showed 100. The z wave side of things are definitely disappointing. I bought them mainly for the fingerprint. So the kids could easily use them. Tho the older ones just use the code, they say the fingerprint takes too long!? But yea it had potential imo def would t recommend from a zwave stand point given the only thing that seems to work right is the locking ability. Open/close sensor, and now the battery part not reporting right donā€™t sit well with me.

Both my non-zwave pro and zwave pro showed high battery in the utec app for the longest time. However, for the zwave, when the battery reached medium, the number changed in Hubitat to 70 or 50, if I remember correctly.

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I'm considering getting some of these U-Bolt Pro Z-wave locks for a new build, and curious if you're still happy with them? I will have seperate hardwired door sensors, so not having access to the lock's built in one is not a deal breaker. I am curious if you ever found a use for the wifi bridge? Does it provide any more useful information or functionality that you can get into hubitat?

I assume the bluetooth phone app works fully independently from the Z-wave, and can only be paired with one phone at a time anyway?

I'm tempted to put these on my auxiliary doors and get the new Ultralock Latch 5 FIngerprint lever one for the front door, but since it has no z-wave, I'd need someway to get the wifi to work with hubitat, which I'm going to assume is not currently possible. Maybe there's some convoluted work around routing through Alexa or something, but obviously I'd prefer local. It does claim it's still compatible with smart things, and I'm curious by what protocol?

I've had the lock for over a year, and in general I'm happy with it but...

  1. Despite saying they were going to implement more Z-Wave functionality, the lock only reports if it is locked or not. The sensor doesn't report anything. So if you leave the door open you won't know. I saw you said you have a separate door sensor, so that won't be a problem for you, but still disappointing to have to resort to that.

  2. I have it set to auto-lock instantly and myself and my family (wife and adult daughter) really like it. I live in a condo and the door to the elevator is right outside my unit. We had tried a delay, like 10-15 seconds (thinking we might want to go right back in if we forgot something) but then we didn't hear it lock as we were already outside of that door to the elevator. So, at least for us, a zero time was right, but it is adjustable.

  3. The auto-unlock is very hit and miss. I get why some people wouldn't want to turn this on, but we like it. When it works, it's great, especially if I have my hands full. I approach the door and it unlocks. Brilliant! (As our friends across the pond would say). But so many times it doesn't unlock at all, or it is so slow to do so we give up waiting and use our fingerprint.

  4. The fingerprint reader started off great, but certainly doesn't seem to have learned and gotten better over time as it said it would. If anything, it's gotten worse. It seems way over particular about exactly how you place your finger/thumb on the button (even though I tried to move my thumb around a bit during the pairing process). For some reason, it works better for some people than others, despite me having myself and them re-record our prints more than once and trying to keep the button clean, etc. But, all-in-all it does work. That said, I had iPhones with the fingerprint button, and I still have an iPad with the fingerprint button, and they work vastly more consistently and reliably than the Ultraloq, and I can't remember ever cleaning those buttons. So either the sensor isn't very good or the software isn't, or both. So that is a bit frustrating.

  5. Auto-mystery-unlock. Many times after we've come in and locked the door it unlocks itself. Obviously, this can be very bad. We do have it set that if it is unlocked and not opened in 30 seconds it re-locks itself, so we've learned to just ignore it and wait for it to re-lock itself. I have 2 main guesses for that: the main one is that the auto-unlock doesn't know to turn itself off when we got tired of waiting for it and used one of the other methods to unlock it. My second guess is that since all 3 of us have auto-unlock on, when 2 or more of us arrive home at the same time they all don't know one of us has unlocked the door. But either way, that is something that should be addressed in the software and just hasn't in over a year.

  6. You can have multiple people have the app. For some reason, as I said above, the fingerprint reader works better for some than others. My wife has a terrible time with the fingerprint reader, so she uses the app most of the time. I tried that too, but it does take a while for it to be ready to use even though I always keep it open on my iPhone (which they suggested to help with the auto-unlock). So the times it just didn't want to read my fingerprint I used the code. (So one nice thing is the multiple ways to get in: fingerprint, code, app, or key).

  7. Spare keys. I went to Home Depot, Lowes and Ace to get an extra key made. When I did it didn't work. They can't quite figure out why and U-Tec support was unable to tell me which blank to use! (Which seems insane) and U-Tec doesn't sell spare keys. So I'm very unhappy that there are only 2 keys for the 3 of us.

  8. Use with Hubitat. Since it only reports if it is locked or not, and I have auto-lock turned on, I've literally not done a single automation with it an Hubitat.

So, the bottom line is : would I get it again? I'm not sure as I haven't any lock shopping in over a year. I had the Shepard lock and it was terrible. This is much better than that, and I would say it is better than just a traditional key.

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Thanks for the thorough update. I'm curious how the app works via BT on multiple phones at once. My understanding with bluetooth is that you can only have something paired with one device. Maybe you're right and the odd spontaneous unlock behavior has something to do with how that's implemented and responds to multiple devices coming and going at once.

As for the spare key I did read somewhere that you can replace the lock part itself with any schlage (I think) lock chamber. Maybe worth looking into if you need more keys.

Given I'll be using these on one or more doors of a suburban house, our use case is quite different than yours so I doubt we'd use autolock anyway. We could be coming in a different door at any given time depending on who it is and where they parked. More likely I will implement it via hubitat so I have more control over when it does and doesn't trigger.

I think most critical for me would be that the lock/unlock commands via z-wave are reliable, and that the lock correctly and promptly updates its status to the hub. The fingerprint reader is certainly an attraction, as are the tactile buttons. It gets cold here in winter and no one wants to take their gloves off to open the door, so I'm steering away from all the touchscreen options (for that reason, and that I've guessed codes at my friends houses before based on greasy finger print residue on a touch screen)

I have the Ultraloq Pro with Zwave. I've been using it for about 6 months now.

One of the first things I did was replace the keyway with a Schlage keyway. Very easy to do.

Overall I'm not as impressed with the lock as I was hoping.

For the most part love the fingerprint reader, but it can be a bit stubborn at times.

I'm very disappointed on how limited the Zwave functionality is. The Ultraloq website says it integrates with Hubitat. In reality it really doesn't. I feel there's a little bad/deceptive marketing in this area. All you can do via HE is lock/unlock and get lock status. For my needs I really wish it could tell who unlocked the door so I could run particular automations as certain people locks/unlocks the door.

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Yes! Yes! This! Yes!

Oh, and did I mention ā€œyes!ā€?? :laughing:

They said they were going to have more Z-Wave functionality well over a year ago. I canā€™t believe they havenā€™t even let the contact sensor be exposed to so we could tell if the door was open. Shame on them.

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They apparently just released an update to resolve this door sensor issue
Can't add a link, but see thier form
I wasn't able to get it to update via Home Assistant Z-Wave JS, wonder if someone could attempt with their Hubitat hub and let us know

Curious about this myself. Where can one find the firmware files to update?

Just to be fair, I have a Yale Assure Lock2 Z-wave and it also comes with its own door contact sensor which works perfectly fine with it's own app, but does not pass that status on to Hubitat via Z-Wave. So Ultraloq is not alone in this regard.

I have used my own contact sensors in the meantime, but it would be nice to have manufacturers that include access to all of the device's features when you use a Z-Wave hub to manage the lock.