Thanks again Mike and I think you’re right. The Aqara devices pairing directly with the HUSBZB-1 gave me more stuff while the HomeKit through Aqara Hub gave me slimmed down stuff or just stuff I’m not interested in like for the Aqara Mini Switch (a button) it only gives me Battery‽ Lame.
Back to my question again if you don’t mind: what did you get to work with August Lock 4 and most important HOW‽
Here is a screenshot of the entities that loaded with the lock. I am using the HA integration. Like I said, you can’t use HomeKit controller because August connects to HomeKit via bluetooth.
One other note - The battery life on the wifi lock is abysmal. I was going through new batteries every 4 weeks. And those batteries are not cheap! But I complained to August. A bunch. And they ended up sending me an August Connect unit. I am now at about 6 weeks and still have 63%.
August is able to push updates as of the April release so state changes should be near instant (sometimes the connect takes a moment to wake up or talk to the lock – this is actually the slow part). This does still depend on the cloud.
I have tried literally every possible combination on August gen 3 and gen 4 wifi locks on bluetooth, wifi, and z-wave. Not one of them is reliable enough for the long-term if your internet isn’t reliable. I have a comcast GB internet plan and a Verizon 5G fallback through my unifi networks, and using these locks through wifi ALWAYS has at least 5s of latency, and through homekit with bluetooth it’s more like 15s. gen4 doesn’t even have z-wave and gen 3 locks basically don’t support z-wave on their latest firmware unless you use the app to wake them up. Apple’s HomeKit bluetooth connections are completely invisible - there is no interface whatsoever that tells you a BT device is connected to your homekit (if anybody knows differently please tell me). I’m going to go back and try the HA integration one more time, as the mirrored BT switch like @Tol suggested is just not reliable enough, but ultimately the only solution I will call good is a local push integration. Is there any thought on progress toward that?
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
