New Locks More Reliable?

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
#1

Hi everyone,

I have the Kwikset 910 lock. I have struggled with every imaginable method to make this thing more reliable in terms of getting VeraLite to recognize the status change and fire the scene however sometimes it just doesn’t report to Vera that it is unlocked or locked.

I have toyed with all wakeup intervals, polling intervals, manual routing (yes before they took it away), ensured I had Beaming/command/security class devices in the mesh path.

To date, I’m not satisfied as I think I have about an 85% success rate on average of getting the lock to correctly report its status.

So some basic questions to the community:

  1. Is there anything else I can do? I thought there was a firmware you could load but needed a special connector not freely available. Other options to try?
  2. Is there a “gen5” lock?
  3. Or are new locks simply more reliable than this model?
  4. Is there a way to determine when reading a zwave lock description to know what is “claimed” to be the most reliable?

Any help is appreciated.

#2

I have had the Yale for years and am very happy with them. I now have 3 of them. Reliability has been 100%. It is a regular Gen3 zwave though.

#3

I’ve owned(own) Schlage and Kwikset and just recently purchased a Yale (most expensive to-date; YRL220-ZW-0BP; 250 user codes; lockout on wrong pin). Kwikset did it in for me, the constant draining of batteries forced me to remove 2 of them from my home and install all Schlage’s (BE469 I believe) on my exteriors. The one thing that irritates me is the lack/inability to OTA /FW update these devices for the expense we pay. For Schlage, it could be performed via Nexia (another $$$) but then they dissolved that relationship and it’s no more. I believe you can ship your Schlage back to them for updates. However my Schlages have been rock solid performers. The Schlage and Yale are not z-wave plus though.

The problem with reliability has more to do with Vera than anything else. I encourage you to look into openLuup/AltUI which I’ve been personally using for months with solid results. No more headaches, lockups, reboots etc. A tremendous solution which is expanding rapidly (e.g. RazBerry support) each week.

#4

I have to agree with the CUDA,

I have 8 Kwikset 910’s due to my ability to buy them cheap and I don’t have any reliablity problems or z-wave issues with them. I only had one battery issue and it was due to deadbolt hole not deep enough. My batteries last around a year for most my locks using Lithium energizers. But reliability or other weird issues stopped when I moved from VERA and started running more then one z-wave antenna or controller (range and routing issues with vera).

#5

Yale locks here (std z-wave) with no issues in 2-3 years. My Vera (veralite) does not seem to have issues others have reported (knock on wood), but I have been exploring openluup/AltUI as a back-up. Cuda, I assume I still need the Vera as a Zwave controller though, right? Or does OpenLuup work with some of the zwave sticks? Forgive the silly/basic question…I still have a lot to read on OpenLuup still.

#6

I have never had any problems with my Schlage locks … for MANY years.
Installed first on Vera 2 - UI4
Migrated (exclude/re-include) to Vera 3 (UI5) and now Vera Plus (UI7).

#7

Most definitely not a silly question.

amg0 and AK have been working on fully supporting RaZberry/Z-Way. So this means that not only can you continue to use Vera/multiple Vera’s (if you elect) for their Z-Wave radio but also a RaZberry/Z-Way once all the details are worked through. For certain plugins such as PLEG, you’ll most definitely want to keep Vera in the chain as PLEG is encrypted and not yet supported within openLuup. There are a lot of other great plugins that do fully operate within openLuup/AltUI and I expect that the list will continue to expand as people continue to test (since we don’t all use the same type of plugins) and report back.

Once I have an opportunity, I’m going to pair my new Yale lock to RaZberry in the next day or so and report my findings to the group (openLuup/AltUI). There’s a thread on the openLuup board you can check to gauge progress on this project.

Hope this helps,
CN

#8

Thanks for all the comments everyone. If the Vera truly is to blame I don’t think simply moving it closer will really help. I’ve noticed that zwave mapping for the mesh never picks the controller itself as a primary communication relay, always some other device. When I did manual routing I did specify the controller only and while the route worked, this was long before the latest firmware update and as you know manual routing was taken away.

The reliability in my opinion improved after the latest firmware luup engine optimization as it was restarting less frequently based on my AltUI messages as well. But I guess I just don’t know why the vera isn’t getting the communication sometimes that it locked or unlocked.

I changed poll to 10,800 and wakeup interval to 3600. This seems to work well. I only saw one post some time back that communication range may lessen when batteries are below 60% give or take but sometimes that seems accurate and sometimes it doesn’t taking me back again to the original point of the thread.

#9

I have PLEG working on OpenLUUP … but decide not to pursue it since it does not support Vera defined Triggers and 80% of typical PLEG logic includes Triggers.

Plans for PLEG support?
#10

Yes, exactly… I’ve become so acclimated to watched variables now that I totally forgot about triggers.

#11

You first have to learn about what all the Variables do … Triggers are defined by the device developer to give you high level meaningful events without knowing the details of the device.