Need help selecting locks for 10 AirBND properties

Has anyone had experience with multiple units and changing codes remotely for rental properties?

I don’t have any experience with z wave or zigbee locks, but I have an August lock. I love it! Best part is that I believe August has a partnership with Air BNB so it can directly integrate with the booking. Not sure if this is what you’re looking for or not.

August doesn’t integrate with SmartThings, though, except indirectly through IFTTT. And even then you can only use August as the “if” not the “that” so you can’t unlock an August lock with smartthings.

You might see if @jrivera is still around, at one point he was planning to put 300 apartments on SmartThings:

I believe @geeji also had multiple rental units.

This is true. Even though it doesn’t integrate with SmartThings, I though it was worth a mention as August is working with Air BNB. They also have a keypad. I have to say I’m very impressed with how well my August lock works.

http://august.com/2015/11/12/august-now-works-with-airbnb-to-deliver-secure-and-easy-home-access/

http://august.com/products/august-keypad/

I did install temperature sensors in a dozen of flats, with very mixed results :

  • this is passive data collection, with no actuator control, nor any “mission critical” function;
  • my experience is that the reliability of the SmartThings platform, end to end, is poor, well below the 99.99% or 99.999% which should be the norm for anything “serious” like locks control or intrusion detection;
  • piling unreliable clouds on top of unreliable clouds (SmartThings / IFTTT / Internet) can only make it worse;
  • the radio range for Z-wave / Zigbee within buildings is pretty dismal (5m / 17’), and Z-wave is limited to 4 “hops”, so you may not be able to have all yours locks within a single location / single hub;
  • SmartThings now forbids multiple hubs for a single location, which was the workaround I initially used to overcome that distance issue (my dozen sensors are spread over 300m).

The bottom line is that I would be VERY worried about building anything “mission critical” on top of the present SmartThings platform. You must be prepared for unreliable behavior, and during some periods, for CATASTROPHIC behavior.
Sure it will work once or twice when you test it after installation; but will it work faultlessly 1000 times after : definitely not :frowning: .
Anything you build using SmartThings needs a “plan B”.
And beware that a (mostly) rare event when you have a single unit (like 1 random failure per month) has its frequency MULTIPLIED by the number of units you control : with a dozen units, 1/month becomes… 3/week !!!
YMMV…

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320 online and more coming on later this year :grin:

Let me know what questions you have and I’ll do my best to answer

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Definitely do not use the ethayer lock management smart app. It’s broken and I had to fix an issue with it… He’s not online at all so if there’s an issue you’ll be waiting around until you, myself or someone else fixes it.

I love the Kwikset 916’s. They’re smooth and reliable. The have some quirks where they may freeze and need to be powered off and on. It’s happened a few times to our residents but with the number of locks I have online, that’s like less than a 1% occurrence rate. On average our locks get used about 10-15 times a day which is about over 3,000 throws a day. So i’d say they handle the lock codes pretty well.

One issue you will need to watch for is if you need to set your admin code and you are allowing the renter to use the SmartThings app. You don’t want to have to change your code each time you have a rental on every single rental. I’m developing a web app to handle code management using the API for multiple properties but until that launches I use a modified version of ethayer’s app that hides all codes from view within the smart app.

Have you guys ever compared Nexia?

No. SmartThings has the most advanced API out of everyone and we have plans to make use of the API. There really is no other company that we feel can handle the amount of hubs we plan to bring online with each new community.