I belive I’ve seen a few requests in this direction, and I’ve suggested this in responses to a few other feature requests (and some support threads,) but I thought it best to create an official Feature Request for Home Assistant Integration.
The world of home automation products is fragmented. Unfortunately, there is no single solution (yet.) The closest thing I’ve found is the Open Source project Home Assistant. It is in no way perfect, but it does the best job I’ve seen of attempting to weld together the wide array of products, interfaces and ecosystems into a single platform.
U-tec has already made integration with Home Assistant possible with their Ultraloq U-Bolt Pro Z-Wave product. But it only provides the bare minimum to be useful. Just expanding the Z-Wave interface would do a great deal to improve Home Assistant integration via it’s Z-Wave JS integration. But what would be “best in class” would be for U-tec to create an officially supported Home Assistant Integration like the competitor August has done.
Frankly, I don’t know if the August integration is associated with the developers of the August Smart Lock officially, or if there is simply an Open API available from August that the Home Assistant community has used to create a robust and reliable integration. In either case, their integration works well.
But let me be clear. I really love my Ultraloq U-Bolt Pro. Even though August has this admittedly excellent Home Assistant integration which is important to me, I chose Ultraloq for two key reasons:
The Ultraloq hardware is far superior to the August Smart Locks
The August Smart Lock Integration relies on a cloud connection to work. I strongly prefer a local connection from my Smart Lock to Home Assistant so that my home automation will work, even if the internet goes out (not to mention the privacy concerns.)
So, what I think would be ideal would be an official U-tec Home Assistant integration with the same level of detail and reliability that the August Smart Lock Integration has, but using a local connection from lock to Home Assistant instance in my home. That connection can be via WiFi, Z-Wave, or Zigbee (or anything else for that matter.)
I agree that it would be great for these locks to integrate with Home Assistant. Developing a local API would be the best way to do this, and would also enable other similar smart home platforms to also integrate with these locks. I also think that expanding the Z-Wave capabilities would also mostly achieve this, which I mentioned in the other thread I created, but I definitely think this is a case of “why not have both.”
I totally agree. I think that’s what the feature request to add an Open API is for, but I’m not certain. I’m sure the community would create an integration if the API was available.
I have 2 U-Bolt Pros that I bought during the Indiegogo campaign… So I’m stuck with Wi-Fi… But almost all the rest of my devices are z-wave, so I’d love if they can build a z-wave bridge so I can connect it to my Home Assistant without using cloud services.
Yes please! An API for integrating into Home Assistant. I already have a U-Bolt Pro and I planing to buy another, but I am waiting to see an integration with HA.
Yes please support Home Assistant! I’m trying all kind of workarounds (IFTTT, Tasker to open U-Tec app, Smartthings/Google Assistant) but it’s not very stable
+++1. I bought the lock because of the auto unlock feature but across 3 premium Android devices and multiple troubleshooting sessions with engineering, the native solution does not work with my wife or my phone. If there was a public API, then, among other things, an HA integration could be made that would allow tried-and-true solutions to take up the heavy lift of “am I home or not” and notifications (these also never work right for me and are very limited), so the Ultraloq product team can focus on core functionality – unlock/lock door.
At the very least, it would give time to the Ultraloq team to improve their software (the app, the lock firmware) to deliver the on the promises of their advertising if they still want the mass-market appeal of a “native” solution.
Those of you with Alexa, Home Assistant, and Ultraloq:
Since UltraLoq works with Alexa, via the WiFi bridge, one solution is to set up a routine within Alexa. Mine is called “Deadbolt.” Then, I actually trigger the lock by running the routine, not saying, "Alexa lock the front door.
Then, with Alexa routines showing up in Home Assistant as entities (Alexa Media Player / HAASKA integrations on HACS), Home Assistant can turn on the routine on Alexa, which then fires the command to the WiFi Bridge, which locks my door. Now, I have Home Assistant locking my door automatically every night and whenever we’re not home. It’s a step-stone process to get there, but since HA doesn’t talk to UltraLoq, Alexa gets to be the middle-lady.
Hopefully, that spawns some ideas for y’all. It’s been working great for me for over 2 years. I can’t recommend UltraLoq to friends because of its limitations, but I’ve worked around them well enough to not replace it either.
Thanks for this idea. Unfortunately I use GHome but was not aware Alexa routines could be triggered by HA and that is indeed powerful. I used to use a separate tool to bridge the gap between GHome devices and HA but that was bug-riddled and has since been discontinued.
I did just set up today the IFTTT integration with Ultraloq to see if it can effect Auto Unlock better than the native solution. I set up two test triggers, one based on my GPS location, and one based on my phone switching over to my home WiFi. I can confirm the trigger works but is too slow for practical benefit, and the action to Ultraloq to unlock the door works but is also too slow for practical benefit.
What I’m looking to do is have my door unlock quickly when I pull into my driveway such that by the time I reach the door, the door is either unlocked or in the process of unlocking. That is what is advertised but other than a few successes in the first week of purchase, periodic updates to the firmware and the app have continually degraded to the experience such that not only does it not auto unlock in a valuable way, it actually creates an extremely insecure environment whereby it will auto unlock the door AFTER I fingerprint sign-in and enter the house. If I didn’t have the auto lock enabled my door would be unlocked without my intent. They need to at least fix that loophole by detecting that I fingerprint logged in and NOT auto unlock 30 seconds too late, or, preferably, just fix auto unlock.
I would have bought more of these locks if they we supported by Home Assistant and also would have recommended to friends and family. But due to lack of HA support I steer people away until HA is supported.
I have the “older” version of the u-bolt pro and the ul3 bt, and hope those might be compatible one day, or that the new version would at least work well with HA.
