This is what has kept me from getting a smart lock. My front door requires a certain of pulling pressure to align the lock bolt properly.
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HomeKit-Enabled Level Touch Lock Features Hidden Design
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Hmmm...seems to me that you are scared that once you start, you won't stop...if you love to tinker.
I agree that some smart home stuff is lame. But, if you have ever left home and forgot to close your garage, having that smart garage door opener....yeah, pretty amazing. But heck, you can drive back home if that is easier for ya.
Sure, but it's FREAKING AWESOME!
I have my house now set up so that I have
- a fake Garage Door in HomeKit (via HomeBridge)
- this appears in CarPlay as a Garage Door so it shows up when I leave and return to the house
- I then have a real smart garage door
- opening or closing that fake garage door triggers various scenes which open/close the real door, unlock/lock the smart locks, toggle the burglar alarms and cameras, change AC temperature, switch fans off, fiddle lights, etc etc
It's wonderful! Feels magical every time you can hit that carplay button as you turn into the driveway and have the garage/house door already unlocked for you and the AC running as you step inside.
(The reason I use a fake garage door as the HomeKit trigger is that you don't want HomeKit scenes triggered by the real garage door opening and closing. You open and close that door all the time, and there is no total correlation between "close garage door" and "I am leaving", whereas I can force such a total correlation for a fake garage door.)
The main thing you have to be careful about with these smart locks is that they need to be PERFECTLY aligned with the door. They can't sorta wiggle themselves into the slot on the side of the door, the way you would by hand if you try to lock a door and feel that the latch isn't going in. If you aren't familiar with locks, be very careful about this -- it's hard to get the alignment perfect, and if your door is old'ish, whatever alignment it had, even if once perfect, may have drifted with temperature, settling, and wood warpage.
Two points.
(a) Yes, it's true that a lot of this stuff sucks. You mostly can't trust brands -- Wyze indoor cameras are very good value, the outdoor cameras are so so, the other devices (like plugs) are horrible. On top of that, HomeKit is currently hot garbage as far as the user interaction is concerned. (The low-level details like security and capabilities are OK, but the automation capabilities, and the app to control those, are pathetic.) And HomeKit is the best of the bunch, an Einstein compared to Google or Alexa. (And then all the pathetic wannabe's that think they'll be the only Smart System in your house, like Samsung or, god help us, the truly deluded like GE's Geneva.)
You absolutely do not want to be setting this up for someone else who is not technically inclined and has no technical patience.
(b) BUT! If you do have the patience and some dollars and are willing to experiment, it can be quite magical.
The camera/security stuff is obvious. Then there are garage doors and normal doors. But then you get lights, plugs, and blinds.
My house has lights turning on and off based on a combination of light level, time of day, motion detection and occupancy. I never turn lights on or off, they're just on at the right level when I need them to be.
The smart thermostat mostly handles temperature correctly, but in my office I also have a fan directed at my legs that comes on when the outside temperature is especially high. (Psychologically I find that when outside is extra hot, I feel slightly hotter inside; maybe driven by light and UV levels?)
The whole house fan is hooked up to a smart switch, and comes on automatically based on various rules (eg if an air quality detector detects that VOCs and particulates in the air are higher than they should be).
The smart blinds save power by covering windows as appropriate, as the sun blasts them with maximum strength, and protect my eyes from being blasted by the setting sun.
I also have a Rachio (smart irrigation system) which is super cool. You tell it about each sprinkler station (plant type, approx size, type of irrigation equipment) and your locality's rules for when you are allowed to irrigate --- important for CA and other dry states; and it controls the timing. Ramps up more water when it's hotter/dryer; less water if it's cooler, no water after it rains.
I haven't yet installed, but they are lined up in the queue, a Sense system for minute-by-minute tracking of my electricity usage (total and by device) and a similar water system (Flo or Phynn, haven't yet decided which) for water.
In a sense these are all small items. But in another sense that's what a smart house is. It's not going to change your life -- it's not a wife replacement, or a car, or a new job. But it makes every day just a little smoother. I smile every day when I hear the blinds going up or down as they track the sun, and know that my little house is working hard to make our lives just that little bit nicer, to remove the irritation of a room that's slightly too hot, or setting sunlight overwhelming yor vision.
My personal philosophy is I'm willing to spend about $100 a month on this sort of experimentation. For some people maybe you want to halve that. But $100 a month gets you a surprising amount of equipment. And my experience has been that the delight I get from the $80 or so that is well spent amply compensates for the $20 or so that turns out to be a failure (product category is just a bad idea, or the category is great, but the particular model I bought sucks.) Right now you do have to keep experimenting -- that's the breaks. Are the Ikea Smart Blinds better than MySmartBlinds? Well, truth is you won't know until you try at least one. You can read the reviews, you can try to think it through; but you just won't know what works for you and what doesn't until you try. (For most things -- cars, fridges, TVs, ... -- we have enough experience throughout life, from using different models in different homes, that we mostly know what we want from a car, a TV, a stove. But for smart devices, you just don't know until you try and experiment!)
Do you want a colored smart lightbulb? Who knows? My experience has been that color is mostly not worth it (except that when I go to sleep the light in the closet goes to a very dim red as a nightlight). But to learn that I had to get a basic bulb (just on/off+brightness), a color temperature bulb, and a full color bulb, try all three in different locations, and track over time what functionality was actually useful vs what was not being used.
FWIW, I have one smart switch to turn the table light automatically at 6AM, to replace natural sunlight in the morning during winter. This makes waking up during winter more bearable. The rest is more gimmicky IMHO.
I purchased this lock and installed it today. Went to setup the fingerprint and it was no where to be found. Jumped on chat with Level Lock and they said fingerprint is coming soon?? Yet they advertised and sold me a fingerprint lock.
I don’t remember the last time I turned off a light to leave the house. Geofence automation for the win.
I just returned the Level Touch after a somewhat frustrating experience with it. For background, I have two August Smart Locks with the WiFi module. I’ve had them for a few years now and they drive me nuts; it would seem the two are not destined to ever simultaneously work correctly. That fact, on top of the fact that their size casts a rather imposing appearance, drew me to the Level Touch.
Installation is not difficult, especially if you’ve ever installed a doorknob or deadbolt before. I did chisel out a little extra wood around the deadbolt catch in the frame, to make for a completely smooth operation. Even with that, installation took less than 30 minutes from opening the package to finishing up, and there was nothing really difficult about it.
Immediately after installation and without installing the Level app, I added the lock to HomeKit. It worked every time, on both WiFi and on Cellular, although I found the variability in response time to be a little concerning. Sometimes it would work immediately, and other times, it would take 15-25 seconds to “go.” This was true on WiFi and on cellular.
A few hours later, I figured I’d start playing with the “touch-to-unlock” feature and the smart cards. This is where the problems started. Unless I missed it, the installation guide does not explicitly state that the lock stops broadcasting its Bluetooth signal 20 minutes after installation. I ended up jumping through a lot of hoops before discovering this fact buried on the Level website. Also mentioned somewhat inconspicuously on their site is the fact that you have to add the lock to the level app before adding it to HomeKit. If you don’t do this in the correct sequence, the only way to move forward is to reset the lock, and to do that, I had to remove half of what I had installed to access the reset button, which is on the key side of the door, on the mechanism buried inside the door. Argh...so much for a quick and easy install...
Once I had removed most of what I had originally installed, the user is required to press the reset button with a paper clip. Contrary to the information on Level’s site, I never heard a chime to indicate it had been reset, even after about 10 attempts. So, I went to “plan B” and just removed the battery, which seemed to reset the unit (or maybe it actually reset via the button; I’ll never know). To make matters worse, while removing the battery, a thin rubber gasket fell out of the bolt and I never could figure out where it should have gone.
I reinstalled everything and successfully added the lock to the Level app, and then re-added it to HomeKit. However, now, about every other time I controlled the lock via my iPhone’s Home app, I got a status message saying the lock was “Jammed” even though it wasn’t. I reset the lock again (Install #3, if you are counting at home) but still got the error.
At this point, I had had enough. I was willing to pay the high price, but only for reliable operation, which this thing clearly did not have. I returned it the next day.
As an aside, why is it that all of these locks rely on crappy Bluetooth? Even my very-cheap-but-completely-reliable HomeKit garage door opener works on WiFi, which is much more responsive and reliable. Is the WiFi chipset still too large to fit into these things? I’m guessing Bluetooth is the reason why I experienced slow and inconsistent operation with this lock, just as I do with the August lock, even though I have a HomeKit hub (HomePod mini) about 6 feet away with one wood stud-based wall between the two.
If anyone owns one of these (or the Level Bolt) and has experienced 100% reliable operation over at least a few months, please post here. I’d be willing to give it another chance if I just happened to receive a defective lock.
Installation is not difficult, especially if you’ve ever installed a doorknob or deadbolt before. I did chisel out a little extra wood around the deadbolt catch in the frame, to make for a completely smooth operation. Even with that, installation took less than 30 minutes from opening the package to finishing up, and there was nothing really difficult about it.
Immediately after installation and without installing the Level app, I added the lock to HomeKit. It worked every time, on both WiFi and on Cellular, although I found the variability in response time to be a little concerning. Sometimes it would work immediately, and other times, it would take 15-25 seconds to “go.” This was true on WiFi and on cellular.
A few hours later, I figured I’d start playing with the “touch-to-unlock” feature and the smart cards. This is where the problems started. Unless I missed it, the installation guide does not explicitly state that the lock stops broadcasting its Bluetooth signal 20 minutes after installation. I ended up jumping through a lot of hoops before discovering this fact buried on the Level website. Also mentioned somewhat inconspicuously on their site is the fact that you have to add the lock to the level app before adding it to HomeKit. If you don’t do this in the correct sequence, the only way to move forward is to reset the lock, and to do that, I had to remove half of what I had installed to access the reset button, which is on the key side of the door, on the mechanism buried inside the door. Argh...so much for a quick and easy install...
Once I had removed most of what I had originally installed, the user is required to press the reset button with a paper clip. Contrary to the information on Level’s site, I never heard a chime to indicate it had been reset, even after about 10 attempts. So, I went to “plan B” and just removed the battery, which seemed to reset the unit (or maybe it actually reset via the button; I’ll never know). To make matters worse, while removing the battery, a thin rubber gasket fell out of the bolt and I never could figure out where it should have gone.
I reinstalled everything and successfully added the lock to the Level app, and then re-added it to HomeKit. However, now, about every other time I controlled the lock via my iPhone’s Home app, I got a status message saying the lock was “Jammed” even though it wasn’t. I reset the lock again (Install #3, if you are counting at home) but still got the error.
At this point, I had had enough. I was willing to pay the high price, but only for reliable operation, which this thing clearly did not have. I returned it the next day.
As an aside, why is it that all of these locks rely on crappy Bluetooth? Even my very-cheap-but-completely-reliable HomeKit garage door opener works on WiFi, which is much more responsive and reliable. Is the WiFi chipset still too large to fit into these things? I’m guessing Bluetooth is the reason why I experienced slow and inconsistent operation with this lock, just as I do with the August lock, even though I have a HomeKit hub (HomePod mini) about 6 feet away with one wood stud-based wall between the two.
If anyone owns one of these (or the Level Bolt) and has experienced 100% reliable operation over at least a few months, please post here. I’d be willing to give it another chance if I just happened to receive a defective lock.
that rubber gasket must have been important in limiting friction. I’m sure any resistance the motor just aborts to prevent damaging the unit. Also looking at the instructions there is an option about adjusting the sound. Did you check that to see if that was off? The reset button only requires removing two philips screws to access. You make it sound like you had to take the whole thing apart. I get that you were frustrated with it but it seems like you were a little unfair with your review.
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Thanks for your reply! I hear you, but the motor didn’t abort, so I don’t know why I continued to get “Jammed” indicators.
As for the sound, it made the appropriate sounds when locking and unlocking, for what it’s worth.
I appreciate what you are saying and respect your point of view about the “two screws,” but I do not feel that the review was unfair. If you follow the reset instructions, you have to get and use tape on the key side of the deadbolt to keep it from falling out; then, get and use a paper clip to remove the “turn” from the other side of the door, to expose the screws you mentioned. Then, remove the screws and take the hardware off both sides of the doors. Then reset it, and then put it all back together. Sure, none of that takes all that long, but my point was that with one line of text in the startup guide, it could have all been avoided.
All that said, if the lock had worked correctly, I would have gladly tolerated that oversight. But having a gasket fall out the first time I unscrewed the bolt (where the battery is located) does not instill confidence in a $329 product that was reporting jams. Even at that (as I suggested in my earlier post), if I had a notion that I simply received a defective one, I’d probably be willing to re-purchase and try again. I’ve not been able to identify too many people yet who have either the Bolt or the Touch; if I do and they largely report positive experiences, I’ll reconsider these products. Believe me, I want them to work...I’d love to have a couple of these things in my life.