I moved my BT dongle closer to the lock and also added a 10 ft UsB extension. That allowed it to be configured. It failed at least once and I just retried it and it worked. I also had some network issues with my home router and discovered I had to remove battery and replace and that fix it not showing up.
Boy is it slow though….
Thanks – I’ve never used Homekit for anything, let alone had experience with locks, so I was wondering what features of the level lock would work through HA’s Homekit server. Sounds like the only things you can do are lock, unlock, and see the status (all very slowly!)
Can you still lock / unlock it through the app? We have multiple users and I’m trying to figure out the best setup. We have August locks now but they drive me nuts. I’d prefer something that’s not a big thing on the door people can mess with.
If you want to use their app then you can’t use it with HA (as far as I know but would love to be wrong here if anyone knows different!) If you use it with HA there is a work-around. I use REST calls to HA to lock/unlock from a phone shortcut that works just fine.
If you’re looking for a smart lock that has no outward appearance of a smart lock, the Level Lock is about the best. It looks like a regular deadbolt, the automatic mechanism is entirely inside the lock cavity.
I am able to use the Level app to lock/unlock/calibrate without any issue. I can also use HA directly or the HomeKit app. Occasionally there are delays (10s+, happens more often than I’d like), but sometimes it also works instantly. Touch to lock/unlock work just as well as before I had HA set up (usually works fine, but sometimes slow updating my location). My HA server + bluetooth dongle are about 20ft away through a couple walls. The annoying part of the delays is the possibility of delayed/missing notifications, but other door sensors help mitigate some of the worry.
Hi - did you configure the level app first then add to HA or the other way around? Also are you using latest Level firmware and HA server versions?
I can confirm I setup the level app first and then connected mine to HA with the homekit integration and it works just like Palm Tree stated.
Does anyone know of a way to connect this Level Bolt Door lock in such a way that it passes through the “type” of unlock action that was performed on the lock? There are several different types of door unlocks/lock actions that you can actually perform on this lock:
In Home Assistant, in the history for the Level Bolt locking/unlocking, it only shows two types - “Lock was unlocked triggered by service lock.unlock” for when I trigger the lock in Home Assistant. And any of the other 3 scenarios I listed above, it shows “Lock Mechanism was unlocked.”
I am hoping that I can adjust my Home Assistant Home Alarm state for the 3 scenarios above where the lock is not unlocked manually. So for instance, if I trigger an unlock on the door via the Level Bolt Keypad, the Level Bolt App itself, or via Home Assistant, the alarm is disabled. If the door is manually unlocked (e.g. someone breaking in by unlocking the lock), I would like for there to be no state change to my Home Assistant Home Alarm state.
I realize it’s more likely that people will kick in a window or just try and kick the door down to break in, but still, it would be nice if I could parse out the different types of “unlock.”
It may be that the HomeKit Controller service (as defined in HomeKit docs) is just not setup to pass these different unlock scenarios as variables into the type of unlock action that was done. I know the HomeKit Ecobee integration passes through far fewer variables than the Home Assistant Ecobee Integration so this might be another scenario like that.
Thanks to everyone who has posed their experiences here! I’ve got a Level at my fully “Homekitted” home and love it and am thinking of adding one to another home, but I don’t want to go to the bother and expense of buying a Homekit hub (e.g. Apple TV) just for one accessory. Seems like it’s possible to get it to work without one, and even if it’s a bit janky/slow that’s fine; it’d be more of an emergency option for me.
Question, though: can I use my Pi 4’s internal BT radio for this, or do I need the dongle that you’re all talking about? According to the spec sheets, the Pi 4 does have a BTLE radio, so I’d think it would work (and, conveniently, my IT closet is within about ten feet of the door I need to control). Does anyone know if that’s likely to work sans-dongle?
Works on my rPi4 internal BLE radio great. It’s on a different floor with a ceiling and many walls between.
Well, I’m hopping on this bandwagon too. Last week, my August stopped working completely and only makes a noise. I’ve tried everything and nothing worked, so I decided to give the Level bolt a shot. It was easy to install, but at first, I couldn’t get it to connect with my Home Assistant. After resetting it, I was able to add it to Home Assistant. It does sometimes react super slowly, but at least it works! 
On the Level lock with HomeKit Controller: So not sure what’s special with my setup here but no luck in getting the Level app to play nicely with the HA Homekit integration!
I did the factory reset and paired the lock with the Level app just fine. I was able to update the lock firmware at this point, so that was good I guess. But after many attempts I just couldn’t get the lock to then pair with HK on HA. I consistently got the “Bluez Unknown Error” message after it timed out?
After another factory reset of the lock it would pair just fine with HomeKit (but now, of course, the app doesn’t work!) It would sure be nice to have the app features (app un/lock, touch un/lock, card un/lock, etc.) to work with HA, but unless someone has any new ideas here I just giving up on that!
The way I managed to have both options was first to configure Homekit and then the app on my phone. on home assistant some times get really slow.
I just got a level bolt and took the following relevant steps:
An unhandled error occurred while attempting to pair with this device. This may be a temporary failure or your device may not be supported currently: [org.bluez.Error.Failed] Operation failed with ATT error: 0x0e (Unlikely Error) in HA when trying to add the HomeKit controller integration for the lock. The error was shown after a delay before and after entering the HomeKit code. I didn’t think to grab logs.I don’t know if (2) and (3) could be skipped, but I’m fairly certain (4) could be skipped. Other people have mentioned factory resetting as well, but as you can see here, I didn’t do that, so maybe it isn’t necessary and it’s just the workaround others found.
Biggest thing is remote / cloud control. Lock door when not at home or see it’s status.
I was successful in setting up level bolt using the native app first. Then for some reason HA apple HomeKit integration couldn’t find it. So I took level battery out for a few mins and I move my Bluetooth dongle to the usb3.0 port on my HA raspberry pi server. Then I added the HA HomeKit controller and it found the level lock. Entered the code and voila it’s working.
So I have both levels app working and HA working. It seems it’s a bit temperamental but it’s working….status isn’t updated all the time and it’s sometimes super slow
I’ve ended up removing my Level Lock from HA. It ended up being too temperamental and unreliable, as well as slow. Initially things were working well for several months, but more recently the missed notifications were disconcerting (it would sometimes say locked when I physically unlocked it, and re-calibrating was not the issue).
Now I am just using HomeKit and the native app, and things work much better. For me personally, I never really used any functionality through HA, it was just nice to have the status logged and tracked.
In my experience… this is all about the bluetooth range. In the lock settings in the Level app, I turned on “Boost Range” for my locks that made a huge difference. I found when pairing with HA, you need to have the BT receiver as close to the lock as you can get. In my case, I have an ESP32 with bluetooth proxy enabled within about 2m of each lock.
In my above setup, it’s been 100% reliable. I only have a couple of weeks operating like this, so I can’t comment on battery life impacts of the Boost Range setting.
about latency: When it’s been a few minutes since interacting with the lock, either manually or through HA, it may take 10s or so for the lock to respond the next time. I think what’s happening is that the lock (or HA?) is dropping the BT connection to save power and then has to be re-established, which takes some time. Subsequent activations of the lock seem to be only 1s or so - for example, if you manually unlock the door and have an automation the locks the door as soon as you close it.
You can have the best of both worlds: Make an input_boolean called ‘lock_status’ or similar in HA and expose it to HK (it will appear as a switch). Then make an automation in HK that flips the switch to on/off when the lock is locked/unlocked. The result is the input_boolean in HA will reflect the state of the lock.
If you wanted to go a step further, you could make a second input_boolean called ‘lock_actuation’ and then make an automation in HK, the locks or unlocks the door when that boolean is toggled in HA.
Yep, I have the same setup. I do have one ESP proxy about 2 feet away from the lock and I have the same behavior with latency when the lock is not used for a while.