I just bought the 3rd Generation of the August Smart Lock Pro and I was wondering how I should integrate it with Home Assistant when it arrives. I have ZwaveJS running now, and I would love it if I could just add it as a secure node without having to make an online account with August or anything. Maybe that’s not possible, or maybe it’s not a good idea for other reasons I’m not aware of, I just want to be sure I’m understanding how to add this thing. I’m aware that the August Integration relies on Cloud Polling, so I’d like to avoid using that integration if possible.
TLDR: Integrate via Z-wave only. No wifi needed to get simple lock-unlock functionality.
E: Turns out integration is needed to lock and unlock. I believe that since I was connected via august app while testing with z-wave, I wasn’t aware I needed this.
Day 1 update to anyone who’s curious in the future. You do need to create an account and fully set up the lock prior to adding z-wave functionality, but you don’t need to setup the connect wifi bridge to get z-wave connected. I’m therefore not using the August integration, and the z-wave connection is incredibly responsive. I’m not using the sense device as I already have a door sensor. I’m sure I’m missing some level of functionality by not using wifi, but for now, I’ll be happy keeping this simple and exploring from here.
New ZwaveJS. And upon even further reflection, I don’t think I needed to add the August Integration, but instead needed to restart the August Lock for the Zwave features to work. I believe this is just a glitch in the firmware.
I kinda regret switching to ZwaveJS so quickly. Restarting HA seems to be a roll of the dice if all of my battery devices show back up. It was tough and go with my August 3 once. Usually it’s a door sensor, but one time it was a GE dimmer switch. I had to repair it. I’ve had to pull the battery on the August to restart it maybe twice, but, but once it’s going, it’s solid.
All of my other Z-wave devices worked perfectly with ZwaveJS - dimmers, motion sensors, door/window sensors. Everything except the August Pro 3.
The lock itself and all the battery sensors show up in HomeAssistant, but activating lock.lock or lock.unlock services from HomeAssistant does nothing and I don’t see any errors in the debug logs in the ZwaveJS2mqtt docker container. I do see the status of the lock change in HomeAssistant when manually unlocking/locking the August lock. I’m not exactly sure why I can’t operate the lock from HomeAssistant. I’m curious if it has anything to do with ZwaveJS not supporting S2 security yet.
Your battery powered Z-wave devices won’t report their status after a restart of ZwaveJS until they wake up. I believe that wake up interval varies between devices, although each device should have a way to manually wake up. Check the manuals of your devices on how to do this. You shouldn’t have to repair your Z-wave devices after restarting ZwaveJS.
I am facing this exact same issue and now kind of repent buying this lock.
Looking at the logs, the message goes to the lock to change to lock or unlock and the lock reports back but with unchanged status.
I have seen this lock has the same issue in Samsung smartthings forums. So it might be a lock issue. It works fine for a few seconds after I perform an operation on it manually or through WiFi but then stops responding to Z wave again
I use Z wave using the ZwaveJStomqtt add on and MQTT integration.
I found it easier to implement complex devices like the Aeotec Siren 6 etc.
I was able to resolve my issues with the August Pro 3 lock and ZwaveJS. I don’t know if the same will work for you, but here is what I did.
I excluded by August lock from the Z-wave network using the August Home smart phone app
I performed a factory reset on the lock through the August Home app, then restarted the app on my phone
After reopening the app, I was prompted to update the firmware on the lock which I applied
I re-calibrated the lock using the app and added it back to the z-wave network using Secure Inclusion
My lock now performs as expected and is responding to lock.unlock and lock.lock commands from HomeAssitant regardless of how long the lock has been idle. It also operates much faster under ZwaveJS than it did over OZW. I can now unlock my door and turn on my z-wave lights at the same time under ZwaveJS, where under OZW it would take the lights a good 10 seconds to come on after the door was unlocked.
Thanks for sharing! I tried that, but it did not work either, so ended up returning the lock, and got an Yale Assure touch screen instead. So far, I am loving it!
Since it has a touch screen and you can setup multiple codes (250!), I now disarm my home as well based on the code entered to unlock the lock.
By the way, if you have not already tried, you could associate the basic set or on/off group of your lock with your lights. That way every time you unlock your door, the lights would turn on (assuming that is what you want), without an HA automation.
eg. I have associated the on/off group of my homeseer entry sensors with my aeotec siren 6. Now it gives a nice chime whenever I open a door. And that happens inside my Z Wave network without any need for an HA automation. Earlier, before I figured it out, I was using HA to automate that chime, and there was a lag of about a few seconds.
Hey, I’m debating weather I should use the August integration (cloud) or use zwave. I was just wondering if you were able to control your lock remotely via the august app (if you have august connect) after you added it to your zwave network.
I can’t speak to the functionality of August connect since I don’t have that device. I only use z-wave. That being said, I highly doubt that the August Pro would disable z-wave or wifi (via connect) if you enabled one over the other. The lock isn’t that smart.
There is an August app available on iphone and android that will allow you to control the lock via bluetooth and doesn’t require the connect device. Using this app is pretty slow for every day operation of the lock since bluetooth isn’t a fast protocol for data and has limited proximity.
The app can come in handy in the rare case that HomeAssistant is down and you don’t have keys. The other benefit to the app is the ability to send temporary keys to people if they also install the August app on their phone.
I chose z-wave because I wanted full local control without cloud services.
As a note, in case anyone reads this later, only the Smart Lock Pro gen 3 has zwave. Standard Smart Lock is BLE only.
It works really well on zwave JS and you can get all the information needed, though it takes a little setting up.
You might want to look at a project called KeyMaster to get the extra info.
How reliable has the zwave side of those with gen 3 pros been for folks?
I’ve got 4 of them and they are constantly misreporting their status. My goal was to eliminate the cloud side integration, but I can’t rely on the zwave info. And zwaveJS even has an error msssage in the settings indicating that “ This lock randomly stops reacting to Z-Wave commands, becoming unusable. No fixes are available at this time.”
It might not be a useful reply, but my answer is “No”. I’m convinced August has decided to punt on Z-wave support, as the lock simply has to stay awake all the time to listen for commands. It seemed like there is some kind of security bug that they were not able to get around, and they just stopped working on it. The only way I was able to make it work was by waking the lock from my phone app first, which is a non-starter.
I see a couple of posts above with versions of this:
gen 3 locks basically don’t support z-wave on their latest firmware unless you use the app to wake them up
Does anyone have more info on whether this is a permanent move or, perhaps, a bug? I’m about to buy a new smart lock and I’m not against having a cloud connection, but I want a local connection for Home Assistant, and killing functional Z-wave support would be a dealbreaker. (Though maybe, as noted above, the addition of Bluetooth support to the HomeKit integration will substitute and I can get a Gen4?)
FWIW, I have owned a Gen3 Pro long ago but didn’t set up z-wave at the time, and my next best option is the KwikSet 916 since it works well with our key setup and is zigbee or z-wave.
Since Home Assistant 2022.8.x August Smart Locks with bluetooth (usually the homekit compatible ones) can be successfully detected via Bluetooth/ BLE using the Yale Access BLE integration. Only thing I found with my Smart Lock Gen 2 is battery level is not reported to Home Assistant. This may be a viable option if your HA Instance is not too far away from your locks.
Bluetooth Proxy via ESPHome is being worked on, and passive proxy works already, but not active proxy yet. It’s coming though
I’d still try the August Gen 3 Pro with z-wave first though and only try other options if it does not work. Don’t bother with the August Connect device though. It’s flakey rubbish and not reliable, and you really don’t want an unreliable door lock.
I have 4x Gen 3 Pros. Z-Wave is entirely unreliable for these devices. I’m using the August Connects, which are just slightly more reliable than Z-Wave on these devices.
I’ve also got them set up via Homekit directly as backups, but the BLE integration is an interesting alternative to this. Only issue I saw initially was that 3 of my 4 locks would pair fine (breaking the existing homekit configuration with the lock), but the 4th one was asking for offline key, which I was having trouble locating. Anyone figure this part out?
And are peopling finding the BLE connection to be the preferred method now?
