I’m considering installing smart locks on my house’s exterior doors. I’m currently looking at the Lockin Veno Solar Face or the Lockly Visage Zeno.

My lifestyle is to always have the doors locked, and we unlock them when we go in or out, and then we re-lock the door behind us.

It seems that smart locks only “smart unlock” the door from the outside, and from the inside you must manually unlock it. I find that annoying and of such an insignificant increase in convenience over my current manual locks that is not worth it.

I suspect that locks that support ultra wide bandwidth (sense the presence of your phone/watch) would unlock from the inside a well as the outside, but I don’t want UWB.

Does anyone have experience with smart locks? Do any of them automate unlocking from inside as well as outside?

  • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
    4·
    12 hours ago

    My recommendation, look for smart locks that work locally with no need for online connectivity. Also choose something that does not replace the deadbolt but only replaces the latch on the inside of the house.

    This means if you need to change deadbolts you can always replace it without getting a whole new smartlock, and if the smart lock fails you can always open the lock with a regular key.

    As for local control, loom for something that works on ZigBee, matter, or zwave and something that you can potentially hardwire, batteries can sometimes last six months on some smart locks but it was a hassle for me, and rechargable batteries only last about 2-3 months.

    As for me I choose the August Smart Lock Pro, 3rd Gen with Z-Wave, Silver (AUG-SL03-M03-S03).

    I chose this as it had z-wave and is able to connect with homeassistant without the need for online connectivity. One item to note, this locks zwave function is reported to drop by many users, I personally have had no issues, but I run everything through HomeAssistant.

    There is also integrated bluetooth which can resolve those issues with bluetooth relays noted on some places online.

    As for hardwiring these locks, if they use batteries you can use something called "battery eliminators” which are basically power supplies connected to an equivalent number of dummy batteries, so in this case a 6V supply and 4 AA batteries, one of which connects to the supply. Just make sure to get your voltage correct, you can use a voltage regulator to do this.