August Locks

I understand there was a demo of utilizing Smartthings with August Locks. Was it using a bluetooth integrator of some sort?

I was wondering the same thing.

At the time it was cloud to cloud.

Could you explain whatever you know about Smartthings working with the August Lock? How would “cloud to cloud” work given August communicates via bluetooth? Thanks!

Just my guess, but since Smartthings has been working on Hub v2 which would have bluetooth capabilities, then a prototype of that was used. Either that some sort of hack. When I reached out to August Locks they told me they are working on integration partners. I’m not entirely certain why both Smartthings and August are being tight lipped about it all unless it is due to contract negotiations. Having that information would drive sales potentially.

August doesn’t have any means to connect to its cloud service without a bluetooth intermediary device (a smartphone, a hub…) so it won’t work with smarthings (v1) without your phone in the scene. So no remote lock/unlocking or that sort of things.

I wasn’t there for that demo but I’ve been told it was cloud to cloud. I don’t know what the Bluetooth intermediary was.

As @ben has mentioned a few times the next version of our hub will have BLE.

@tyler what is the current state of August integration (if any) and what can we expect in terms of the new hub with BLE?

An alternative would be Lockitron. Same concept device, but has open API and isn’t dependent on Bluetooth making it a viable option for the SmartThings community today.

August locks are only Bluetooth and can’t connect to ST. However, there is a company which makes the same looking lock and it can connect to ST for the main reason that they also use Z-Wave.
http://shop.danalock.com/products/7-poly-lock-other/

So, does this mean the August lock will never work with smart things since ST does not have bluetooth? Hard to believe there’s no (round about) way to get this integrated…maybe using Android tasker, harmony home or similar. All this time I thought the ST hub had BT. Guess not.

V2 of the SmartThings hub will have Bluetooth, so we may have to wait for official integration.

A roundabout way may be using a rooted Wink Hub as a bridge

Here’s to hoping that August will be compatible with Wink just to use BLE.

So I just got an August Lock and really want to know how ST did this since August is a BT lock only with no cloud component.

I understand ST v2 will have BT and Harmony Home Hub is working on August integration with their BT stack, but how did ST do this in Vegas at the demo home?

@Ben just want a straight answer, was it a beta version of ST v2 Hub with BLE or a beta version of Harmony Home Hub + ST integration or was it a hack with someone else locking and unlocking the door from behind the camera :wink:

Would like to know the real solution and how soon we can see something similar go to market.

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I do feel it was a little misleading to demo the August with ST. That being said it was probably a hack or we were tricked into thinking compatibility was coming soon, lol. In either case, I hope to hear support for it soon. I just got my red August lock last week and I like it a lot so far even if the app has been bugging out on me.

Yeah I’m starting to think it was a hack with the lack of response from ST and @Ben. I like the August BT capability to share temp ekeys with visitors without having to manage pin number like the traditional z-wave pin locks. But I would prefer to use ST modes to manage the auto-lock and as the August everlock feature has it’s problems. They recently upped the everlock time from 30 secs to a configureable time upto 5 mins. But that’s still annoying if I just step out of my house to do yard work and leave my phone inside i get locked out. I’d rather use ST to auto-lock when everyone leaves like i did with my older z-wave lock.

This question was addressed at the end of the last developer discussion call. It was a cloud-to-cloud integration that apparently wasn’t the greatest.The integration should hopefully improve with hub v2.

@nelemansc I find that hard to believe that it was cloud-to-cloud since August doesn’t have a cloud component. August does not interact over the Web at all it uses BT and proximity. Only cloud part of August is it’s key management. ST would require a 3rd party BT device (i.e. phone or logitech harmony home hub) with the registered eKey to lock and unlock the lock it self. So if it was cloud-to-cloud how was that achieved? Did august deploy a cloud component that used the iPhone BT to act as a hub and then ditched it? Either way sounds like a hack to me then…

Sounds like smoke and mirrors that both parties now wish they hadn’t demonstrated.

Since August was more than likely still in the development stages during last years CES, it is very possible that they had an additional radio or a different process where it could interact over the web. Purely speculation since I am not affiliated with either company.

Well I’ve been following August since they announced the product and they have never suggested a wifi radio being part of it, only way to support cloud would be wifi. In fact one of their selling points was that it didn’t rely on wifi and internet, plus it saved battery life. Only other radios would be zigbee and z-wave, which would mean it could integrate directly with ST and not need cloud-to-cloud. Like you said “pure speculation” which is why as a ST owner and August owner I’d like to know exactly how this was achieved, simply saying cloud-to-cloud with no explanation as to how is tough for me to swallow.

ST probably should have used a standard z-wave lock to do the lock demo at there CES home and just told us August integration is coming as part of ST v2 using BLE. :smile:

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