Level door lock?

That’s indeed pretty poor business practice - a bit like the big Australian banks. Recently came off fixed and their offer was a full 1% higher than the market :slight_smile: I’m sure you know what happened next.

Back to the Lock, I have been off smart locks for ever because I was waiting for Matter to arrive. At to that the fact I like the understated look, there’s really only two players - Lockly and Level. Not sure if Lockly is Matter enabled but given I’m starting from fresh the issue you’re mentioning is less of a direct concern.

Where did you buy from?

I bought direct from Level.

1 Like

Tried that as well but they only ship to the US

I got my matter update too and for me it has been a nightmare. BLE was pretty hands off, and with the exception of one of my Atom’s dying (I then bought a few backups) it’s been perfect.

It took me ages to get it to connect to my Google home app, because I don’t have a Matter radio, and once that finally happened I tried to expose it to HA.

After exposing to HA (which, again, took ages) it worked fine. I updated my broken automations and stepped away for a minute only to return to it being offline.

I wish I hadn’t done this. I saw a lot of people really liked it so I went for it, but I ended up spending $99 on the stupid Google Nest Hub only for it not to work. Sigh.

A few things

  • There is no “matter radio” - matter is the protocol… Thread is the radio part.
  • If you do the update, you need to have a Thread network in your house either using the Sky Connect (now called ZBT-1), Apple homepods/tvs, or Google nest devices
  • If the lock is your only thread device, it would likely need to be close to a thread border router (for example, in the same room). Thread is like zigbee in that it’s mesh network and the more routing devices you have the better

It sounds like you don’t already have Thread in your house?

Does the SkyConnect/ZBT-1 device have support for both Zigbee and Thread yet? Read that it doesn’t yet, and people recommended to get 2 for each.

I think they don’t support both with one dongle yet.

However, to be clear, if you have any Thread border routers already (google home, apple homepods or TVs), you can load the credentials of that network into Home Assistant and then HA will use those border routers - no dongle necessary. Follow steps 1-4 here.

I did this with my Apple thread network (created with 5 homepod minis and 3 apple TV). I transferred the credentials and made it my preferred network… at that point Thread stuff “just works” with HA. I do not have a Thread radio connected to my Home Assistant box

Thanks for the info. Yeah I was caught by surprise or didn’t do enough research to know I would need to update my hardware. I’ll go the HomePod mini route and do this setup. I got an Apple TV HD and totally thought I had a 4K, so couldn’t use my Apple TV for the router.

I posted in this thread over a year ago looking for advice, so many thanks to everyone who provided guidance! I finally got around to setting up HA and adding a couple Level Locks, so in the spirit of trying to give back, here’s my experience if it helps anyone:

I’m running HA on a Pi 4, and my original plan was to use the Pi’s BT radio, since my IT closet where it sits is just on the other side of the hall from the door. Once I put the battery in the lock and went to “add Homekit device” in HA, it was able to detect it. It turns out, however, that this is NOT the right way to do it, because you can’t pair it to the Level app (which is required for a lot of additional functionality, firmware updates, etc.). So, I factory reset it, set it up first with the Level app, updated the firmware, and THEN went and paired it up to HA. That worked perfectly, and now I can control it via the Level app and HA.

Note: the locks themselves will continue broadcasting their availability over Bluetooth for 10 minutes after you power them up, so if you wait longer than that, you need to either go into the app and tell it you want to connect it to HomeKit or pull the battery, but if you do it within 10 minutes, HA will sync up right away even if you don’t go through the “add to HomeKit” flow in the app.

Unfortunately, the lock was very unstable. It’d often drop offline, the response was incredibly slow, etc. just like a lot of the complaints here. I grabbed an ESP32 board off of Amazon, flashed it with the BT Proxy firmware, put it in the same room as the lock. It definitely worked better, but it still was a bit glitchy. I then disabled the Pi’s internal BT, and it started to work perfectly: no drops, no glitches, almost instantaneous responses both to commands and state changes.

It worked so well I got another one for our front door (all the way on the other side of the house) as well as another BT proxy board. Just for the heck of it, I didn’t bother trying to pair it using the Pi’s radio and just brought the proxy online, and it worked perfectly. So it seems like the newer ESP32 firmware does indeed allow pairing.

On the negative side, I don’t think the Level Bolts themselves are very good devices. They’re expensive and required grinding down some bits of my old locks to get them to fit. The Level App itself is garbage—slow, unreliable, and even basic stuff like firmware updates takes several tries to get to work. The locks are underpowered and jam unless everything is absolutely perfect; I spent a hell of a lot of time repositioning strike plates and chiseling my door frames. The locks sometimes cycle properly mechanically but “think” they’re jammed and make the stupid “blip boop” sound and report “jammed” back to HA. Unfortunately, they’re the only option for something that looks good with our existing door harware, so I’ve just resigned myself to tolerating it (and, because HA is so wonderfully flexible, I have deployed some software solutions, like an automation that waits to check if they’re actually locked, and if not, first tries unlocking and relocking, and then notifies me if it’s still not locked; 99% of the time, the unlock/relock loop solves the problem).

The good part is that they really do work perfectly with HA and the BT proxies. While the app is sluggish and unreliable, I’ve never had trouble with HA. As long as I interact with them exclusively over HA, I’ve been pretty happy. Don’t bother with their bugged auto lock/unlock nonsense; just build automations in HA and let it do the hard work.

I haven’t tried upgrading to Matter (and I think I may have missed their stupid window anyway), mainly because I don’t currently have a Thread radio in my setup. They also work so well with the BT proxies (from a connectivity perspective) that I also don’t want to screw things up. Given my generally low opinion of Level-the-company and their buggy software, I’m worried that a one-way upgrade could screw it all up.

Thus endeth my story.

1 Like

Level originally indicated the matter update for the bolt and lock+ would only be available for a limited time. They have now indicated the firmware update will be available “for the foreseeable future”.

2 Likes

They made the matter update for the (1st gen) bolt available. This was a great thing and I enjoy the benefits of their support and would laud their post-purchase support except…

They are holding back on supporting (2nd gen) Touch purchasers even though the hardware supports matter (boo!).

They will offer you a little coupon discount if you paid them money before to get a (marginally) discounted deal on a new lock+ purchase which will then support matter…this is an openly hostile user experience and I am resentful enough to advocate against buying the product that I own, use and have generally liked.

I have 2 more possible installation locations for new Level products but I am holding off on any new purchase until I see full support of my existing purchases.

2 Likes

If I’m looking to purchase a Level Lock+ – is there any reason to buy the “Bluetooth” version over the “Bluetooth + Matter” version?

I’m not up-to-speed on matter yet, so I’d likely lean towards a esphome ble proxy; will that work with both versions of these?

Or does it make more sense to stick with the BLE version and upgrade it later, should I expand into a Matter ecosystem.

IMHO, there is no downside to the matter compatibility. You will likely want a proxy regardless, it’s just that matter allows direct connection to homekit as well which gives you the best of both worlds.

I ask because I read this: https://old.reddit.com/r/LevelLock/comments/1i0irud/matter_update_and_bluetooth/

It works via Bluetooth on the level app still, but it won’t do Bluetooth via HomeKit anymore.

And, if I’m not wrong, the way HA integrates this over BLE is via HA’s HomeKit system, right? So…would that not work then? Or is this person mis-informed?

If it is on matter than you put it into both - you are not using the HA-HK integration anymore. They both still communicate via bluetooth AFAIK. My personal experience when I got the updated firmware for a Bolt was I was paired with just the App. Then I paired to HK. Then I got a matter pairing code from HK and paired it via the matter integration into HA. Easy-peasy. Now I have full access from app, apple and home assistant. I believe the only limitation is you lose the ring/amazon/front-door deal whatever that is.

Edit: I believe it may also be important to ensure that your HK and HA devices are all using the same thread network.

Please see this section on improve Bluetooth connection times:

Anyone having success keeping their matter lock (I’m using the bolt) working in HA?

I’ve had no drops in connection on my Google Nest Hub, but HA keeps dropping the device after I have added it. It just goes unavailable after some time.

No problems here. Solid as a rock added directly to HK and HA.

I added 3 bolt locks to HA (via Thread ). Been the best experience I’ve had. I was using Bluetooth and delays were several seconds. Now instantaneous.