I have 3 zwave Schlage Connect deadbolts which have been quite reliable. I have occasionally had some zwave issues with them, mostly in pairing them even though I have a large number of beaming repeaters close to them. The biggest annoyance seems to be how long they take to send their status to the hub as it causes issues when tracking open/close/lock and unlock events. The open/close is much faster than the lock/unlock.
I read a post on reddit that stated that since the locks are not zwave plus, they do not have “instant status” and I assume they must therefore be polled by the hub for the status to be updated. That lead me to check the Zwave Product Alliance and I found that Schalge had certified ZWAVE PLUS versions in late October!
I then looked at Schlage’s website and noticed they now also have a ZIGBEE version!
I am tempted to replace all 3 locks but I am wondering whether to go ZWAVE PLUS or ZIGBEE…
I am honestly tired of all the ZWAVE related issues I keep running into. Zigbee seems so much better however my Zigbee experience is mostly relegated to sensors and a few plug in outlets I use as repeaters. I believe the backbone to be robust (I built it out to fix my initial zigbee issues) but I also have 4 Wifi APs, Sonos (they have their own 2.4GHz network) and a couple Zigbee mesh networks so the 2.4GHz band is a bit crowded and interference is a real concern.
What do you all think? Which one is the best/safest approach and why do you think so?
I prefer zigbee for sensors, but I don’t use it for fixed location devices like door locks simply because once you run into Wi-Fi interference it can be very difficult to solve.
Also, I’m not sure what the person on Reddit was talking about, but there is no “instant status“ difference between zwave plus and earlier generations that applies to locks. All zwave locks report their status when it changes. The only improvement you might see would likely be due to the greater range of Z wave plus.
This is a huge - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it moment… (You said they’re quite reliable - but I’m also interested in how you’re doing open close - as I didn’t think Schlage devices had open/close sensors in them… Just the Yale)
If you are having reliability issues with the Schlage, it’s almost always one of three things:
No beaconing repeating device close to the lock (Signal strength)
Battery low in the lock
Bad ZWave Module in the lock (This is usually an instant and permanent failure though)
Replace the batteries and take steps to improve your zwave mesh. You can get a number of wired repeating beaconing zwave devices for the price of one of these. @JDRoberts has put a link to a number of them in various posts.
My 3 locks update status rather quickly and its never been an issue. The ONLY thing I have an issue for is Alexa reporting the lock unresponsive after I issue a voice command to lock one (and the lock locks itself anyway)
@nathancu - I installed several GE/Jasco outlets around all the door locks to ensure there were wired beaming repeaters. I have upgraded most of my wired zwave devices to zwave plus (over 100 devices) and I am working on replacing the last few zwave classic stragglers. While researching the topic, I found that you lose some of the zwave plus benefits if there is a zwave classic in the routing path; for example, it appears that for NWI (Network Wide Inclusion) to work, there cannot be a zwave classic device in the routing. One big reason I want zwave plus hardware is the ability to update firmware. I have several cases, where apparently identical devices seem to behave differently and I am guessing some of those are due to different versions of firmware. The locks are an example… while I can’t provide examples of the issues (can’t recall details), the oldest lock definitely behaves differently than the two more recent ones. Most of my lock related pains are during inclusion/exclusion. Once they finally join the mesh network they tend to work fine for long periods of time. As you stated, a battery change often fixes any other issues that come up. Overall, I seem to be having a much better experience with more mature zwave plus products - things seem to be more stable. I am also keen on adopting more S2 devices - especially locks - in hopes ST will soon role out support as promised. All my switches, dimmers, and fan controllers (therefore my home’s backbone) support S2. Locks seems a logical next step.
The contacts are actually provided by my DSC alarm system interfaced to ST via an Odroid C2 running Ubuntu and a variant of AlarmServer that takes care of the communication between DSC and ST. This avoids needing to add ST specific sensors where I already have alarm sensors.
My perception on the locks being slow at reporting their status is based on how fast I get vocal alerts on lock/unlocked versus open/closed. I know there is a lot more involved that could be introducing a delay… however in a few cases I watched the ST app and the status was very slow in updating. Again there could have been other causes… but… other than hurting my wallet, I can only see benefits with regards to upgrading my locks to firmware upgradable locks that support the latest zwave standard features.
@Automated_House - I am using Lock Manager and a custom DTH that works best with it. I do not know whether it supports this latest version of these locks so thanks for letting me know. I can’t seem to find these new locks online so I’ll have to go look at Lowes / Home Depot.