Best Connected Lock for a metal door gate

Living in San Francisco means that a lot of homes here are townhome construction, and right up against the city sidewalks. (Mine included.) This leads to every home having a gated entry, which is locked by a single Schlage deadbolt which is turned by a key to get to the actual front door.

In addition, however, the gated entries have a doorbell, speaker box and a remote gate open switch powered from inside the house. The deadbolt itself is neither turned nor engaged by the remote switch, however. The remote gate open works by releasing the metal holder in the gate into which the deadbolt fits.

Rather than replacing the Schlage deadbolt with a battery operated deadbolt that connects to the SmartThings hub (which may or may not work because of it’s distance from the hub), it may make more sense for me to effect the entry by inserting some sort of Z-Wave contact fixture device to activate the “door open” button for the gate from within the house.

Question is: does this approach make sense, and the follow up question is: has anyone ever done this?

  • Rob