I thought they were joking when I first read it. This is what I mean by “total horror show”.
The best case scenario is that this is just a documentation mistake, the person who wrote the docs didn’t know what they were doing, and the people who designed the system did. But it’s going to take a lot more than just amending their security FAQ to convince me of that.
I don’t remember the details as it was about a year ago, but there was some basic security fail around adding my wife’s account to my lock. It “just worked”, and didn’t require me to verify anything that I’d want them to confirm before granting access, like actual ownership of the email, or something. That, combined with the laughable security statement, was the final straw for me going standalone-only.
Can you provide a link for those directions please? Which model were you successful to directly integrate into HA? Using which protocol (wifi or bluetooth)?
That’s because you cannot activate inclusion mode on an Ultraloq zwave lock without installing their app, and giving them your data including phone number.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve thrown away enough electronics already because the company decided they were bored with supporting it or the company went out of business and the only way to activate it was their ‘cloud’ solution.
I confirmed this with U-Tec support and returned the lock. The instructions on the zwave alliance’s website for entering inclusion mode do not work. I don’t know if they did once and they removed it with an update or what, but the one I purchased 2 weeks ago didn’t allow for it. As far as I’m concerned, this defeats the entire purpose of what I’m trying to achieve with HA.
If it were up to me, the device would be decertified from the zwave alliance since it doesn’t follow the rules/instructions under which it was certified, but maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon.
I would love it if someone started a threat to identify the most compatible lock with HA, with the no external requirements.
There are plenty of YouTube video that talk about all these deadbolts how compatible and easy to set them up with HA. What they seem to gloss over is all the third party requirements.
You and me both. I intend to buy a bunch as soon as I find one that works.
It looks like kaadas might have some, but they have NO retailers basically anywhere in the entire western world (north america or europe), which is annoying.
I have a Kwikset 66492-001 control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT and am pretty happy with it. The lock itself was a bit finicky to get set up, but the Zigbee part is solid. However, it’s an older device so I’m not sure how available it is. Even in Canada I had to order it from Amazon in the US.
Looks like Utec no longer ‘works with home assistant’ and they have dropped works with smartthings.
I gather with their introduction of U-home they are closing off all other options to force use of their own infrastructure…
A sad demise of what was a good product!
Bye bye U-tec
I was able to connect my U-Bolt Pro Z-Wave to HA (technically, to ZwaveJS), following the standalone mode instructions I found in the two manuals I downloaded from the z-wave alliance product page. I think standalone functionality is a requirement for z-wave certification, or something like that, because I can’t imagine why they would have invested the effort to build it otherwise.
The instructions for entering standalone mode on a Z-Wave lock amount to:
Factory reset the lock.
Hold the “enter” button for 3 seconds.
Enter your new admin code, press enter, enter it again, press enter.
The z-wave alliance product page (and the certification process behind it) is one of my favorite parts of the z-wave ecosystem. They require certain basic functionality, and standardized information, and then they present that information in a standard way. They also host the files themselves, so that even if e.g. the standalone mode info is removed from future versions of the user’s manual, you can still see it in the old version hosted by the z-wave alliance.