Hi, I've have a Kwikset 916 deadbolt for a few years now, and it's been pretty unreliable, has poor battery life, and finicky in general. I want to get either a Yale or Schlage deadbolt, but wasn't sure which in general is more reliable since I have no experience with either. I was looking at the assure lock 2 touchscreen, and Schlage Camelot/Century series, both with zwave plus.
I'm on a C8 hub, with about 40 zwave devices, multiple repeaters, and roughly 20 zigbee devices. I appreciate any input people have, thanks!
I have 3 schlage be469zp locks. All current firmware. Anything new won't have a problem with hubitat. Make sure though you pair within 3 feet of the hub. Older versions of the lock with older firmware have issues connecting.
Z-Wave plus has been around for a long time. In fact AFAIK the Yale products are still shipping with the old ZW2 module which uses a 500 chip and is limited to S0 security. Does not seem to be a big deal though since locks have minimal messaging, my Assure SL works fine with S0. I also have two older Schlage BE469ZP locks (Camelot I think) I got used, those actually can use S2 security despite being older. Both have been good for me.
The Schlage is a little more noisy and takes longer to unlock.
The Yale Assure 2 I believe comes standard with BLE and then the z-wave module is an addon (can be purchased as a kit usually). The nice thing with the BLE is you can use the Yale app for auto-unlock as you approach the door, if that's of interest. My SL does not have that feature I found out after I already got it.
Gotcha, I appreciate the info. If choosing a 500 series, having a fair amount of rules and automations is irrelevant for a device to be 500 or 700?
Also would you happen to know if both the Schlage and Yale locks support the same device drivers that my Kwik set does? The reason I ask, are some important automations I use differentiate between a pin code unlock, and simply turning the deadbolt to disarm our setup.
Here are events from my Yale with the ZW2 module. This uses the Generic Lock driver.
Both show up as a physical unlock but you get the code name event if a code is used.
The "manual" unlocks are probably when it is unlocked from the inside with the thumb turn.
Finally got my Schlage lock installed, so far so good. Seems like the motor is a lot beefier than my Kwikset lock, and the build quality seems better overall. Paired the lock close to the hub, and then installed it in the door (about 20ft away from the hub, very close to three plugs/repeaters). I noticed that it shows 44 route changes, but maybe that's just because it's still figuring itself out since it was just paired less than an hour ago?
The lock seems extremely responsive. The "swap apps device" worked really well, and seemed to retain all my rules associated with the old lock. That saved me so much time, I'm really pleased with that.
gotcha, I am using LCM, i'll take a look at that. It seems like it has always had trouble adding codes to locks that have "lock code encryption" enabled.
IMO lock code encryption is pretty useless, AFAIK it just hides the code from the UI. I never have turned it on due to all the warnings and no real explanation of what it actually does. if you dont want people snooping on the hub turn on login security.
I suspect your LCM is going to be messed up. I have walked a few people through recovering it, so let me know what state things are in and I can give some guidance.
Good to know about the lock code encryption. Do locks that have it enabled, generally have more connection issues? I turned mine off and will rely on the hub login security.
LCM always has issues for me with deadbolts and locks. Maybe it's because I always paired the lock, enabled encryption, and then tried to setup through LCM. Maybe the encryption prevents it from sending the command to the lock? It works really well for my old Iris keypads I use though, but they're zigbee.
I don’t think it should impact the connection to the hub. The encryption is just done on the driver, it would not interfere between the hub and device.
It is supposed to work correctly with LCM. Just always seemed like an extra hassle to me, since I have always had the login security enabled anyway.
Also do not confuse paired z-wave encryption with the code encryption. Sometimes that gets confused in lock conversations
That said, personally I don't use code encryption. I mean, the likely hood of someone trying to break into my hub so they can see the lock code vs breaking a window with a brick while we're not home is pretty low...
