I’ve gone from thinking the Z Wave support for this lock is “disappointing” to “broken”. It turns out, not even the battery life sensors are being updated to the Z Wave hub. That’s just ridiculous.
I found this out after my lock stopped being able to unlock itself correctly, and it took far longer to troubleshoot than reasonable because the lock was reporting 100% battery life the entire time, but the batteries needed replacing.
Battery life reporting is bare bones, basic stuff for a $10 Z Wave device, let alone this. If Ring can implement a fully functional security keypad, complete with alarms and arbitrary codes over the standard Z Wave interface, there’s no excuse that most if not all of the existing in app features can’t be made to work over Z Wave instead. But instead we have a lock that can’t even report its battery life.
I’m actively looking for replacement locks and do not recommend these to anyone. Ultraloq clearly does not care about the Z Wave product line at all.
I assumed that most of the functionality of the WiFi hub would be available in Z-Wave model. I couldn’t find anywhere where it states what can and can’t be done in Z-Wave.
But as a minimum it should do what they defined in your specification.
The Ultraloq U-Bolt Z-Wave Specification Manual states that when the door is locked or unlocked the deadbolt will report
Door Condition| Bit 0: Door | 0: Open, 1: Close.
Door Condition| Bit 1: Deadbolt| 0: Locked, 1: Unlocked
I did some testing in various door Open /Closed and Locked /Unlocked conditions.
All my reports indicate DoorCondition as either
-0 for door locked (opened or closed) or
-2 for door unlocked (open or closed)
It appears open, even when it is closed.
The Bit 0, indicating Door Closed would result in a 1 or a 3.
So I don’t believe its reporting per its own specification.
Seems to me the only thing I can do with Z-Wave is Lock or Unlock the deadbolt.
Lucky for me I read before buying, so Ultraloq lost sales of a few locks to Schlage. Thanks for highlighting this issue, OP.
To add insult to injury, when creating my account here just now the form told me my password was not secure enough, when the actual “problem” was that my password was too long .
I couldn’t agree more. I need user code reporting which is standard zwave functionality. If it had this like all. Other zwave locks I tried, I would buy dozens!
Question: I have 2 of the original U-Bolt Pro (with Wi-Fi bridges) and my family loves them. Me too, but I’m done with devices that need to go through the cloud, they’re slow and unreliable.
What do you guys see as working with the U-Bolt Pro Z-Wave version and Home Assistant?:
a) Does it report open/close?
b) Does it allow to lock/unlock?
I agree that reporting battery level is basic, and it’d be great to report which user open the door, but I’m willing to buy the z-wave version as long as it reports open/close and I can lock/unlock doors via Home Assistant.
After replacing a butteries in my Zwave lock few things happened:
I lost a perfectly working sensor.
Unfortunately my door is metal and sensor not really supported
for the metal doors but after initial initial installation sensor was
working very well. Now I cannot make it working again.
LEDs are not flashing anymore for indicating Locking/Unlocking activity.
There is nothing in the app related to the LEDs.
I believe, at least this could be restored.
The question is - How to restore LED Activity indication?
Looked at a lot of locks, liked this one the most but Z-Wave implementation is very disappointing. Door open/closed status and which user unlocked the door would make it very awesome
Agreed. Another zwave lock from a major competitor reports which user (and code) was accessed when the lock unlocked. Just only having locked/unlock is not enough to determine what scene should trigger for that user. Also am disappointed about this.
Got my 1 and only u-bolt zwave lock since it was on sale for black friday/cyber monday.
I wouldn’t buy another one unless they:
1 - Added support for reporting the lock code used, like all of my other zwave locks (kwikset and schlage) do…
2 - Added support to do zwave inclusion/exclusion without the app. As it is now if they go out of business and the app stops working, then you can never re-pair the lock again. Not cool.
Definitely won’t recommend it to other zwave users at this point.
Is there any update on this Z-wave feature request? I specifically am waiting for Seaver to report back which user unloved the door. Based on this info I would be able action scenes in my house (e.g. housekeeper needs all lights on when she comes in)
I absolutely agree. The fact that it’s only functional Z-Wave it’s just a report if the door was locked or unlocked is a let down. My prior lock was from a major competitor that at least reported which user unlock the lock at whatever time. Made a big difference when it came to using that for scene controls for the user entered. I can’t believe they haven’t added this functionality yet. Their competitors are ahead from this point of view.
I have four of these locks connected to my Hubitat and really would like to see the Z-Wave capabilities expanded with all the suggestions here. I was disappointed to find I couldn’t see the open/close status off the lock sensor and not being able to see which code unlocked the door.
Bumping this. While I do like the u-bolt for it’s form the software support is really lacking.
The z-wave function is really the only thing holding this back from becoming the darling of most all home automation communities.
A fix of the battery reporting and door sensor reporting would already help a lot, because those are de-facto broken compared to the specifications released in “U-Bolt Z-Wave specification manual-V1.0.pdf”
Has anyone heard anything from U-Tec about progress in Z-Wave implementation along the lines discussed in this thread over the past year. I am going to move back to Kwikset locks for my purposes if Z-Wave reporting remains crippled.
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