I have several doors that have both z-wave locks and separate contact sensors.
This means for theses doors I have both a lock entity that can be locked or unlocked, and a binary_sensor entity that can be opened or closed.
Why not have a helper to combine these to a door entity, that can be either locked, unlocked, or open?
Further, then we could also prevent lock.lock from being called on an open door (though potentially a new “force” option could override this).
Mainly I do this in the UI so I can show the overview of all my doors in one simple view, which is something my SO in particular absolutely loves and checks every night before bed:
The downside of template entities is when you click, you can only see the history of the lock (so it’s lockable) but not the open/close history. And having double entities for all the ones with locks makes this just too clunky. I also have to repeat this template code to have these show up on other views.
I had the same problem, solved it with a template sensor that combines the door and lock. But it is cumbersome and als requires custom cards on the dashboard.
Door /lock entities must also work for Europe, as built into the Matter standard recently (Thanks, Nuki).
That means they need to support actions for “opening the door”, “unlocking” and “locking”.
Assumed spokesperson role
But why did European users have to demand this feature in the first place? One of the reasons is
the difference between European and US locks. In the USA, where the development of the Matter
standard began and where industry giants like Google or Apple are headquartered, locks typically
have only two functions: unlocking and locking. European models, on the other hand, almost
always have a knob on the outside and offer the option to keep the door closed with a latch without
locking it. “As a European company, being the spokesperson for European users on this issue was
important to us – even beyond the scope of our own interests. We were able to ensure that the
function became part of Matter 1.2. This now benefits our customers, but in the long run, it benefits
the entire Matter ecosystem,” says Co-founder and CEO Martin Pansy.
Am I correct in understanding that electronic door locks in the European market have a door open sensor in addition to the normal lock/unlock functionality? Interesting.
Not necessarily. I have a door open sensor plus a smart lock.
But the main difference is not the sensor.
European doors usually have a bar or fixed knob at the outside. At the outside, they do not have a door handle that you could turn to open the door.
They also have a latch to make it possible to keep the door shut without locking it.
So european smart locks can usually lock a door, unlock a door (without pulling the latch) and open a door (unlock and pull the latch, so you can just push the door open).
Doors are also built differently, as you can see here, for example:
