Just for reference, I dropped this review over at Amazon based on recent Yale Conexis L2 experience. I’m just going to blatantly copy it here and hope that’s not a violation, but here are the other full escutcheon locks listed that I can find, and what I’m thinking about buying next (Blusafe, just because they’ll US ship, and they’re in Amazon, and are much cheaper in Amazon). At the tail end, this also mentions what I’m trying next with HA based on other reported successes with the Yale lock. But I’m definitely annoyed and disappointed with Yale.
Purchased this Yale Conexis L2 lockset in the US for an Emtek hardware door, so of course as expected, Yale is going to decline support on this lockset, saying this isn’t made for the US market - the principal reason being it only works with Yale Home which is only available in the UK Apple App Store. But in reality, this is a bigger issue with Yale and Assa Abloy (parent company) and just reflects why you shouldn’t buy a Yale Smartlock, and I’ll do you the courtesy of explaining why with this review if you bear with me.
The trouble with Yale’s story is the connection modules are all standard bluetooth and wifi, and there’s no reason for this except for Yale stupidity and support customer service reticence, which is par for the course for them (take a google tour of search results for Yale Conexis and Bluetooth and you’ll see what I mean).
The stupidity seems to be tied to Yale decisions to try to make extra bucks by selling you extra keys on an already expensive lock, and building that into an app and not being willing to let go of the opportunity to sell you more “slots” for keys, at least in my view. So if it weren’t for this, they’d make the enrollment process supported on standard apps, as it fits entirely within the technology footprint of their other lock sets and there is no reason for this (bluetooth, wifi, and the connection bridge all feature the same behaviors, protocols, and codebase). So what you end up with when buying Yale is a pretty badly broken and fragmented technology ecosystem, where you’re not going to get locks that work how you want.
This in my opinion has probably been even further exacerbated by the August Lock acquisition, and now you’ve seen various old Yale apps forcibly obsoleted for a landscape of multiple confusing apps today (Yale Access, Yale Home, August Home, Yale Accentra Access, Yale Secure, Assa Abloy Access, Assa Abloy Guardian… need I go on?) with duplicated functionality, but sprinkled around incompatibility at the same time, and its like trying to navigate an obstacle course to find what works.
Yale, or the parent company Assa Abloy should really have to go through training wheels school before they’re allowed to operate a business selling software dependent products, much less graduate to big kid panties. Now don’t get me wrong, the American manufactured hardware of these companies are nice, and that’s why you’re tempted to buy it. I know you are… why do you think I own this thing and am leaving this review, I fell right into that groove. But letting these guys try to do business with software is just what you’d expect from asking hammer and nail guys to write you some software… “to do what, hammer better?” You’re going to get a really great hammer and nail, but the rest of the experience is going to suck.
If you have a regular lock, try some other folks - Level Lock has been pretty good to me under abusive conditions elsewhere, and has held up despite some routine configuration annoyances (but at least you can get through them). Unfortunately, most of your Emtek type three point / five point lift the handle to lock door hardware is going to be euro cylinder based and come from the UK. But try some other options. I haven’t tried them yet, but I think Tedee, Nuki, Neatatmo and Danalock are options, but none have the integrated door handle and lock set configuration common to this Emtek multipoint style configuration with both handle and deadbolt in the “escutcheon” which I think is called a “full escutcheon”. For full escutcheon locks, it is even harder, but I’m leaning toward trying BluSafe next, but Avia and Ultion+Nuki is a decently packaged solution as well. I’d go with Avia as they look well designed, but they also have the feel of a pretty small company. BluSafe really looks like about the same hardware architecture as Yale, but with an actual software solution versus whatever you want to call what Yale is trying to do.
Meanwhile, before I bounce this one back, just for grins I’m going to throw together Home Assistant on a spare Raspberry Pi and a Z-wave repeater with a M5tech ESP32 bluetooth bridge running on the far end by my Yale lock, and try to grab it with a Yale Conexis plugin for Home Assistant. I already have Homebridge running which connects various wifi products to my Apple Home, and I can just feed in anything I want to manage through Home Assistant, then I may be happy enough with the Yale. But what a hack.
