I have a bluetooth-only (no wifi bridge) Ultraloq. It auto-unlocks when I leave the geo-fenced area and come back. That’s all good.
However, if I do not leave the geo-fenced area, and simply go out of bluetooth range and then come back and approach the lock, it does not unlock. It does not show a red light or send any notification. All other bluetooth functionality and communication with the lock appears to be working properly.
So my question is whether just approaching the lock without leaving the geo-fenced area is supposed to trigger auto-unlock?
That’s unfortunate. That means whenever I go outside to do yard work or to the garage for a few minutes, I will need to punch in the PIN or take out my phone to hit the unlock icon.
It seems very nonintuitive that it wouldn’t support this, and it’s not mentioned anywhere I could find that I could find that this behavior isn’t supported.
For a week or two I thought it was broken or not setup right.
I might argue that if you’ve locked the door and want it to stay locked, to have BT unlock it as you’ve suggested would not always be desirable. You could unlock it “by accident” very easily.
A sensible behavior would be for bluetooth auto-unlock to only unlock if you have auto-lock enabled. Then even if you unlock it accidentally, it would lock again after whatever timeout you have set.
Having previously used a Kevo lock, I can tell you this won’t be reliable. The issue is that it isn’t possible to definitively know that you are on the correct side of the door to allow entry.
On the kevo which was advertised as being able to sense whether the bluetooth device was inside or outside, in practice it would allow anyone coming to the door to unlock it if the phone inside was within about 5 metres of the front door.
Jerry, thanks for your feedback. Sorry for that the auto unlock wouldn’t work if you don’t leave the geofence range(300 meters). This would go against the purpose of having a geofence; perhaps we can see if the user needs to set the geofence closer.
Hi Carrie, I’m not against additional distances for the geofence. But why can’t both strategies be available? Under Auto Unlock, add a checkbox for “Enable bluetooth proximity” to allow the user to to opt into that. Autolock takes effect via a timout - it doesn’t use the geofence.
Ultraloq does a lot of things to make a door lock more useful. And I think in most ways it’s a great product. But the lack of bluetooth proximity unlock makes a common user action harder.
Allowing a geofence distance down to the resolution of bluetooth proximity doesn’t seem like it would be reliable. But that’s not my area of expertise. But if bluetooth proximity was added I don’t see a reason not to allow a user to have both active. Geofence would unlock for the timeout when returning from a car trip. When approaching a locked door without having left the geofenced area, bluetooth proximity would unlock it.
Hi Bryn, for the scenario you lay out, I would expect the bluetooth auto-unlock only when the phone transitioned from out of proximity to within. Autolock would then lock it again after the timeout. If you left proximity and then re-entered, that sequence would occur again. But I don’t think it matters (and in fact I would want it to work) whichever side I am on.
Someone else approaching the door wouldn’t unlock it if they were not an authorized user.
Fair enough, and I do like the idea of this feature, but in my mind that is a reasonably big security risk - say your doorbell rings and you walk towards your door to answer it. The door unlocks itself as you approach, before you can confirm who is there.
The other is if your phone is sitting on the fringe of its range. It will lock and unlock every now and then while you might not be near your phone. As an example I have an aftermarket proximity keyless entry system on my car which automatically unlocks on approach, and relocks when leaving reception. When I am a few metres from the car it locks and unlocks repeatedly.
Ok, that makes sense. I understand your objection. Making it optionally enabled via a checkbox would get around that though, yes? I have a single Ultraloq on a side door that is adjacent to my detached garage. For my usage, that is the primary door I use when going out/coming back from car trips and also for doing stuff around the house outside. When I’m not using the door, I’m rarely near it.
If I added an Ultraloq to the front door, your scenario would make me not enable it for that door (if that was made to be a feature).
