The instructions that @bdraco sent me got it working with my gen 4 lock! Do note you’ll need a rooted Android phone or some means of pulling a key from an iPhone backup.
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I just saw this in the release notes for 2022.9
- August locks are now supported under the Yale Access Bluetooth integration. Thanks @bdraco
So does that mean there are no additional authentication steps that were required with 2022.8?
Please see the documentation for authentication options
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August Locks can connect via Homekit or Yale Access integration now as Homekit in HA now supports Bluetooth. With that said, my August Gen 2 does not report battery level to Home Assistant via the Yale Access integration, but the lock and unlock functions are now very reliable. Previously I used the August Connect, which was flakey and really not reliable at all and that is not good for a lock.
I haven’t actually tested how well the Homekit connection works, but via Yale Access it works well if you are within bluetooth range of your HA hardware.
Hopefully Bluetooth Proxy via ESP Home will have active bluetooth support soon as that will fix all the range issues completely.
If you have the August integration setup in HA, it shoudl pull the “offline key” from that automatically to allow the Yale Access bluetooth integration to work.
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On that note, does anybody know the advantages/disadvantages of the Yale integration vs. HomeKit? Or any opinions? I can see HomeKit being preferred as being standardized and part of base Hoome Assistant, but I could also see the device/vendor-specific integration being preferred for more thorough/accurate/direct support.
The key advantage is The Yale Access Integration will work with the lock, and the HomeKit one won’t since we don’t have the manufacturer specific authorization data in HomeKit.
Besides that, there really wouldn’t be much functional difference if we did have the key besides the door sensor won’t be exposed in HomeKit
Ha, it working is certainly an advantage! Thank you for the info, and all the work you’ve done on this.
I’m wondering if anyone on this chain can help. I run HA in a docker container on a Synology NAS. For some dumb reason, Synology killed the ability to add a bluetooth dongle in DSM 7. I would really love to be able to use the Yale bluetooth integration. Does anyone have any ideas how I might be able to get around this Synology bluetooth limitation?
Wait for esphome based proxies to support active connections
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On the Active BLE Proxy thing. That is released now, has anyone got the Yale Access BT Integration to work with Active BLE Proxy via ESPHome? I can’t get it to work. Gives an error about a slot being available. I was hoping to test this to see if it resolved the slow response issues as my lock is right at the edge of BT Range from my main HA Instance.
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Hi, May I know the distance between your HA bluetooth dongle and August lock?
August said the bluetooth connector should within 15ft. But it is not available for me. I plan to try HomeKit with a HomePod mini. If the connection is not stable, I may get a bluetooth dongle. But my HA hardware is around 25-30 ft.
If you want to pair your lock directly with HASS you need a BT dongle of some sort. If you pair the lock directly with a HomePod then HASS isn’t involved at all.
If your HA is more than double the recommended distance away, then don’t try it. Add another Bluetooth adaptor either on a long extension cable or try the USB over IP option if you can get that to work. I haven’t used USB over IP so not sure how to set that up.
August locks do not work with ESPHome BLE Proxy at this stage . There is an open issue with ESPHome about this.
August Locks will not be reliable even at the stated maximum distance from August. They need to be quite close. If it’s more than 6 to 8 feet, you will have reliability issues in most cases.
With dev HA 2022.12.x and dev esphome 2022.12.x + (this fix which is not yet merged Detect BLE stack unrecoverable state by bdraco · Pull Request #4128 · esphome/esphome · GitHub), I moved my production setup to use the esphome BLE proxies running on Olimex ESP32 Power-over-Ethernet ISO with the locks an everything is working well.
HA 2022.12.x is scheduled to be released on Dec 7th with the esphome update coming in ~1 week later.
Does it mean, I can use a BLE Proxy with August 4?
Yes it does
Quick question: I’m using:
Supervisor 2022.11.2
Operating System 9.3
Frontend 20221208.0
and
ESPHome 2022.12.0b3 (on an ESP32 DevKitC v4)
Should the Yale ASL-06 work via the homekit integration?! Because for me it doesn’t. It does however now work with the Yale Access Bluetooth integration flawlessly.
With homekit it does connect, and show the state, but it won’t allow me to control the lock. If I try to, this error (at the bottom of the screenshot) pops up.
The first sentence in English is something like “Error while calling the service lock/unlock.” followed by the MAC address and “PDU status was not success: Insufficient authorization (3)”
Sounds like this is still the case:
Yale Access Integration will work with the lock, and the HomeKit one won’t since we don’t have the manufacturer specific authorization data in HomeKit