Great video Craig. I'm reviewing this product now and it's mind blowingly good! Was nice to see a familiar face when doing my research 😘 I can't see how to get Siri shortcuts to unlock the door, I can only see the option to lock it. Wondering if that's a US versus UK thing. Waiting for a reply from Switchbot on that one. Hope you're well dude!
Hey Paul, thank you very much for checking out the video. I am doing great. It is good to hear from you. I hope everything is good in your world. I went into my app and I am only able to lock it through shortcuts. Unlike most of the SwitchBot stuff, there isn’t the choice of more than one action. I will check out your video to learn about all the things I should have included in my video. 😀👍 Thanks for saying hi.
I was looking for the electric door lock because I often forget the keys. But other types of door look required a replacement of the knob itself. By renting an apartment and have no skill to replace the knob with electronic door lock, I almost give up until I come across this product. Easy to install and no hassle. I might order one right away.
I was going to say, "how do you mount it with the lockset being upside down?" in the video and then you showed exactly how. Cool product. I bought the Switchbot Smart Blind Tilt and love it.
Love mine. The 3m adhesive pulled the paint of my door so I ended up screwing it in anyway. I’m not mad at the lock, I’m impressed at its torque. If anything I am disappointed in my landlords choice of paint. My only real complaint is it’s still not compatible with home assistant (but my other Switchbot things are)
Hi Craig. Another very well done video where you make something seemingly complex instead very approachable for the timid person. Moreover, you’re adding to the growing field of videos helpful for those who either rent or own in a building with a common hallway (e.g., a condo or townhome may have strict limits on what can be done to the door in a shared hallway).
I would love to see a feature added to the fingerprint keypad, so that if it will recognize a valid fingerprint, it can trigger a custom action like sending a command to a Switchbot bot to press a button or trigger an alexa routine, send http request etc. This would be so useful for a lot of cool smart home projects where I can trigger routines just with a fingerprint 🙂
That is great that your landlord was good with it. Smart locks are great, you forget or lose your keys and you can still get in. Enjoy your smart lock.
Nobody ever talks about the fact that 99 % of locks are NOT aligned with the hole in the frame and need a bit of force to engage, mainly because of the rubber gaskets around the door to cut the air from getting in. How do these "smart locks" deal with that fact ?
That is a great question. What I had to do what adjust the strike plate for the door knob. Either slide it one directional or another so the knob takes the pressure off the door. In my house the deadbolt was taking the weight. I had to chisel an 1/8th of an inch to move the knob strike plate. You can also try to shift the deadbolt strike plate to shift the pressure to the knob. That is a great idea for a video. Thank you. Hopefully this helps some.
This is so cool. I rent an apartment where the lock of the gate doesn't work well. This may solve it if the glue of the lock doesn't leave a mark. Thanks for sharing.
Great video with a solution I might try until I can get a Schlage Encode Plus. Quick question: how easy is it to remove the tape from your door if you want to remove the Switchbot Lock. I really want native HomeKit support, as well as support for HomeKey, but with the 35% discount I might consider springing for a Switchbot Lock to use until the Schlage Encode Plus is actually available to mere mortals. 😉
Seems that the advantage is that it preserves the entirety of the original lock in case you need to remove the smart lock later as in vacating rental property. Something like the August or Wyse lock replaces the rear thumb lever of the lock while preserving the front, tumbler and bolt of the lock which means you need to store the original thumb lever somewhere to restore the lock to it's original configuration when you leave the rental property. It would be nice if the keypad included a finger print reader (something that both August and Wyse lack) but the video did not make this clear despite mentioning that two keypad models were available, nor did the video state whether the lock had a timed auto lock feature and a geofenced return auto unlock feature. However, the NFC ability is interesting. Note that with these keypads, one place to put them would be under the lid of your mailbox thereby obfuscating their existence, if they had a mercury switch, they might even be used to tell you if the mailbox had been opened by a mailman if you are fortunate enough to still have door to door mail service. Despite the cosmetics of this unit, this would seem to be a good choice if it has the features you want.
I bought this for a brother of mine who is disabled. I thought it would be a good way for him to let health providers in his apartment with voice commands or let me open the door for EMTs remotely. It was pretty easy to install and didn't require any holes in the door. Alexa integration was good. Unfortunately, it jams 99% of the time from the Switchbot App and Alexa. I think the issue is that humidity and temperature changes affect the exact placement of the bolt and slot. This makes the motor unable to turn the lock. I've tried recallibrating multiple times. It worked fie on your model door, not his real one with summer weather changes. This is very disappointing because if it did work as promised, it would have been a huge help.
What I had to do with my previous smart lock was make sure that the bolt is not taking the pressure of the door. The door knob should take the pressure. For my august lock I had to move the metal plate in the jam so the bolt didn't have too much pressure. If you are having problems with the SwitchBot lock, the issue will probably be there on other locks. My august lock jammed and would not work until I took pressure off the bolt. I hadn't thought of it being an issue until experiencing it myself.
Hey Craig Great video and very cool luck. One question though. My current lock set up looks a little different from the example in the video. In order to lock my door I have to use a key both inside and outside. Will this lock still work for me? Thanks!
I love it, My door gets hot during summer, I wonder how the double-sided tape will handle... I wanted to buy and test the turn strength but you cant return it if the package is open.
FYI - the double sided tape isn't "normal" - it's 3M VHB (Very High Bond) which is really double sided foam, it's extremely strong - they use this stuff to hold windows in skyscrapers - the heat won't be a factor, no worries.
If anyone is interested, I made an extension for the Switchbot Lock. It lets you use it on locks that have a recessed knob that the normal part can't reach. Made a video about it and added links to the 3D model files if you want to make one too: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dwaqqWMg-p8.html
Does this lock have a proximity based Auto Unlock feature? Like if I approach my door with my hands full of groceries, would be nice to have it unlock.
I have a question. Our lock is very special. It's spring loaded to always rest at 12 o'clock. If I want to lock i turn the knob to 2-3 o'clock and the bolt extends in to the doorframe, but when I release the knob it goes back to 12 o'clock. Same thing when I unlock but 9-10 o'clock. When you unlocked with the key it seemed like the smart lock was "fine with just moving along". Was that correct? If so then this might work on our door
I don’t think so. That can happen with or without this lock on the door. This is just turning a knob. More expensive smart locks would have the same problem. Thanks for watching.
No they don't unfortunately in most cases it is sacrificing the door lock. I actually swapped out my door handle to a non-locking one. The smart lock is pointless if someone locks the door knob lock and your locked out.
Hey Frank, I’m so sorry that I hadn’t responded. Marian is right. I was sent it from SwitchBot. It is a cool little door. Behind the scenes secret it had a crack in the corner that I had to make sure didn’t show up on camera.
This style locking mechanism isn't very common in the UK though. Most are 5 point UPVC door locking systems which these simple smart locks aren't compatible with.
So basically it’s just a copy of Nuki without the other cool feature?! :) Just joking, it’s good that there is competition, checkout Nuki, a really nice Apple home friendly product.
Not carrying keys and remote access. That would be the biggest things. Family members who may not have keys still can use a keypad or be let in remotely.
@@CraigsTechTalk Maybe some people can find or justify a use. I’ve been a house builder for almost half a century, it seems like a solution to a problem that pretty much doesn’t exist to me. Maybe with a few unique exceptions. I do like the concept of the normal switchbots though.
There is no HomeKit support at this time. There is a new SwitchBot Hub 2 that supports Matter and works with HomeKit. That does not support the lock yet, but is supposed to add support for it.
