I am looking for a way to monitor the current “dumb” deadbolts in my house. Going beyond knowing if my doors are closed, I would like to know if the deadbolts are locked in the house without having to buy a smart pin based deadbolt for each door.
I found an solution called the INSTEON 2845-222 Hidden Door Sensor which would be the ideal solution, but its Insteon. This solution would allow me to drill a hole in the strike plate sensing if the deadbolt was engaged. So far I have not found anything similar that would be z-wave compatible.
I’ve been tossing around the same thought for a while, interested in where this discussion will lead. Just a thought, would something like this work, with a small magnet attached at the end of the bolt?
I like the idea of being able to know when the door is locked without needing to replace my deadbolt. A plunger style sensor connected to a z-wave contact sensor should work.
@the2352@tomkuhn@notoriousbdg , I’ve tackled this in one way already for my crawl space door. Like you, I did not want to spend that kind of money, but I still wanted to know if the door was locked - especially for just a crawl space.
The door has a barrel bolt and a keyed lock, and the keyed lock just rotates a plate into a slot into the door frame. I bought an Ecolink door/window sensor and attached the magnet to the rotating plate so that when it’s locked it meets up with the sensor to trip it. I created a device type to allow me to have ST see it as a lock and not an open/close sensor, which then allowed me to use it under Doors & Locks to show my crawl space as closed (using a sensor I already had for open/close) and locked.
I also bought another Ecolink sensor (exactly like the Schlage but much cheaper) to come up with a similar idea I have for monitoring a dead bolt. Since these sensors have internal contact screw terminals as well as the magnet, I’m going to see what I can do to run small wires to the bolt inside the door to trip the sensor via those terminals. I hope to get to that project within a few weeks.