I’m renovating my house and plan to have multiple deadbolts in close proximity to each other (garage and mudroom entrances). Is it possible to share a single bridge? I know the support article says “for best stability” use separate bridges, but I was hoping someone had real world experience with this.
I’ve tried, I have 2 locks (front and back). Is I’m not mistaken they communicate via Bluetooth to the bridge, so the bridges can’t be too far away from the lock, I had to put 2.
So it worked ok? These locks will be within 8 feet of each other and within 10 feet of the bridge.
In my case it didn’t… I had to put 2 bridges… One lock is about 5 feet from the bridge, the other is about 6 or 7 feet from the 2nd bridge.
My locks are about 20 feet one from each other… and I tried to put one bridge in the middle (15 or 16 feet) and it didn’t work for me.
But who knows, yours are closer, maybe it would in your case.
I’m planning on getting rid of mine and buy the Z-Wave version once they drop the price (as I implemented a local Home Assistant solution).
@Ashman @gminicucci the bridge can only be set up with one lock simultaneously.
If you have two locks, you will need two bridges to work with them.
Unless the bridge design is new, they are awful. I had to put a Ubiquiti WiFi access point within 3 feet of the bridge. I have no idea why u-tec has not addressed the bridge issue yet. Read the Amazon reviews.
Totally agree with what the last poster said… the WiFi bridges don’t work well. They are kind of hit or miss and will sometimes just not communicate until they decide to. I have several U-tec Lever and U-bolt Pros installed at a couple different offices and a vacation home used by employees. Sometimes I can reach the smart door locks remotely and sometimes not. Sometimes it takes a really long time (a couple of minutes of trying) for the smartphone app to connect remotely to a specific smartlock.
To answer your question, no, you cannot pair more than one U-tec smart door lock to one WiFi bridge. The WiFi bridges use Bluetooth to communicate with the U-tec door locks. The bridges can only maintain one paired relationship at a time. If you take a WiFi bridge and try and pair it with a second smart door lock, it will forget the 1st door lock you paired it with. This is a limitation of the specific version of Bluetooth protocol used. I think there are some recent versions of Bluetooth that will allow more than one paired device at a time… but not sure. I tried to pair multiple WiFi bridges to more than one lock and know for a fact that it does not work, unless U-tec has changed something in the last year or so since I did my testing. Not sure why U-tec doesn’t make this more clear. The way they expalin this leaves room for interpretation that a second simultaneous pairing is possible, but it is not… because of the Bluetooth protocol limitations, by design.
@Day @Partin Please click here https://support.u-tec.com/hc/en-us/requests/new to submit a ticket directly. If we decide your lock is defective, we’d be happy to offer a free replacement under warranty. Please don’t worry.
My recommendation is the get the newer ubolt WiFi models rather than the older ubolt models that need a bridge. They work much better because of the door sensor (in my opinion), have similar battery life, and don’t need a bridge.
