I received this lock months ago. I purchased this from the U.S. after I found that they were not available in Canada just yet. Fast forward a month after I received it and they are.

Needless to say, I’ve been very happy with it since. I live in a small home and only require 1 deadbolt for my front door; however when ordering I could have had more than the one deadbolt using the same key (for a small nominal price). I’m not sure if a local locksmith can do the same, I haven’t looked into that yet.

Price (7/10)
The price is steep, at least I think so. Along with this, I had to purchase a new handle, a drill bit (not Yale’s fault, see below) and I had to pay Duty/Taxes (see above). I think as every other ZigBee Pro device out there, it is on par, but I still think ZigBee Pro is quite an expensive piece, but much needed for Control4′s stuff to work right.

Installation (10/10)
When installing my deadbolt, I had to get a drill bit to make the hole a little bigger, the Yale TS Deadbolt is standard size, but my original deadbolt was sub-standard so I just had to make the hole bigger. Everything else was super easy to get done. Following the step-by-step instructions provided with the deadbolt was very simple. That is why I’m giving it a 10/10. It wasn’t Yale’s fault I had to make the hole bigger.

Initializing / Configuration (9/10)
When I first powered it up, I changed the Master code. I had to choose a code that was between 4 and 8 digits long. To enforce security, I chose some obscure 8 digit code, I strongly suggest you do the same. That being said. The TS menu is simple to navigate through, you press a button and a voice will tell you what you are doing and you just follow the prompts.

Pairing it for the first time was rather easy. James connected remotely to my Home Controller and began configuring. The deadbolt was easily paired with me over the phone and that was it. I went to 4Store and download the Lock Manager app afterwards and was able to start adding users.

For users I chose to give them 7 digit codes. Although 4 is fine, I’m a stickler for security and try to make sure things are as secure as possible. The navigation isn’t easy, on an HC300 it’s painfully slow. This is why I give it an 9/10. It’s not Yale’s fault, but configuration over the application in navigator is painfully slow to go through. Once it was finished though, everything worked like a charm.

Overall (9/10)
I don’t know how Kwikset locks work, but from what I’ve heard the Yale deadbolt is a better piece of hardware all around for configuration and what not. I’ll be posting an article later on how to configure notifications using Brightsky’s Push Driver and show how to get notifications of all the users who unlock the door. It’s one of the best features this thing has going for it.

The deadbolt is great, I love it, it has a lot of features that you can program using Composer HE/Pro and extend it’s use far beyond what it’s default use is.

- Eric B

URL: http://www.extravegetables.com/products/pushnotify-brightsky
Author: BrightSky
Distributor: Extra Vegetables
Price: Ask Your Dealer

Requirements:

• iOS Device or Android Device
• Control4 2.0 or higher

Configuration:
The configuration for it is very simple. The license offers a per project basis, so you can have multiple devices configured. Currently I have it configured for my wife’s iPhone and mine.

You require the proper app on the iPhone (Prowl) or Android (NMA) and then apply the keys offered by that software. You plug in the activation code and that’s it. You can then use the driver as you see fit.

Overall (10/10)
I highly recommend this driver for anyone with an Android or iOS device. I forgot to add the rating to this review, but let me tell you, it’s a really good driver to have in any project.

Purchase:​ If you are insterested in purchasing this driver, please use contact form below.

- Eric B

To accomplish this, I’ve used the Push driver created by Extra Vegetables.

Pre-requisites

• iPhone or Android
• Push Notification Driver (installed by dealer) from Extra Vegetables (Review Here)

Step 1: The One And Only
It’s simple, there’s no other step, you just add the programming to the Project name.

• Select the Programming Tab
• Make sure you select When Project <Project Name> Loads

• Then you put in the programming
  • You’ll notice here, I’ve added a 30 second delay. I’d suggest you do the same to make sure some delay occurs before the notification goes out to make sure all networking is up and running properly

Alternative Method
You can alternatively use the default built-in notifications. I chose the Push method to avoid having to purchase a 4sight subscription.

- Eric B

In this article I’ll show you how to go about the setup, I’ll go through a few examples. The way I’ve done it maybe isn’t the best way, but it works for me. Whenever I do some programming, I try to write out pseudo code first so that I get the logic down before going forward. In my house, my wife has chosen the colours of the LEDs, she’s chosen RED for off and BLUE for on, don’t ask me why, but she got the final say on it. So in the examples below, you’ll see the

Let’s get the pseudo code out of the way…

(Top/Middle/Bottom) Button

IF ANYTHING IN ROOM TURNED ON
— SET LED TO BLUE
ELSE
— SET LED TO RED
END IF
IF BUTTON PRESSED
— TURN OFF ROOM
— TURN OFF ALL LIGHTS
END IF

So that’s the basics of it. Now let’s get down to the knit and gritty. What I’ve done to accomplish this is setup 1 variable per floor and 1 macro per floor. To reuse the macros for the action of clicking, I’ve setup a 4^th variable named “6ButtonClicked”.

Variables:

• PowerTopFloor
• PowerMainFloor
• PowerBasement
• 6ButtonClicked

Macros:

• PowerTopFloor
• PowerMainFloor
• PowerBasement

In the examples, I’ll show you how to setup PowerMainFloor for the other two, you just rinse and repeat while finding lights/devices for that floor.

VARIABLES

Let’s start by editing your variables. In ComposerHE you go to the programming tabe and find the variable. This is where I set the colours for the 6Buttons. In the example here I’m only showing one 6Button, but you’ll need to add the other 6 Buttons if you have them on each floor.

From the screenshot you can see that when the variable is TRUE the colour is BLUE (Well a shade of Blue/Green), when FALSE the colour is set to RED. Again, you’ll have to add the colour for all of the 6 Buttons you choose to run this on.

MACROS

Ok, now the meat of what happens. I’ll post the screenshot and explain further.

I start off the macro by setting the variable to False. I then check the condition of the 6ButtonClicked variable. If it’s true, then the button was pressed and we start turning stuff off. I put this in to help reuse the macro and make things run cleaner. ComposerHE programming is a little limited, but I think this makes it cleaner than having multiple macros and having it into a macro helps reuse it without having to copy/paste the code elsewhere.

So now, if 6ButtonClicked is true, we set it to False and turn stuff off upstairs and delay 5 seconds to make sure things are off before proceeding.

The next part runs through checks. You can include the Room’s POWER_STATE in each macro, and if it’s true, set the variable to true. The rest are the things not controlled by the room’s Power State such as Lights.

Additionally here if you have relays to check, you can do so easily by adding the checks here and in the 6ButtonClicked portion having the relay turn off/close.

6 Button Keypad

The 6 Button is rather easy to program. You select the button, select the pressed action and make the 6ButtonClicked variable true and then run the macro.

Floor Status

So how does the 6 Button know things have changed? In the Room Variables, go to Light State and execute the PowerTopFloor/PowerUpstairs macro in my case. You could simply change the Floor variable to True as well to avoid excess code execution.

You’ll need to do this for each light / relay you want monitored as well.

To sum up this is how I do it. I have to thank my friend Jean for the idea. He does his slightly differently than I do as well, so there are multiple ways of doing things, some might be better/faster but this works for me. In the 6 Button Keypad programming, if I add Double Tapping or Tripple, I’ll re-run the macro so that the colours get setup again, although I’m not.

- Eric B

My wife and I have iPhones. She has a 3GS (inherited from me when I upgraded to 4) and although she wants a newer one, we’re waiting. For this programming you can setup email notifications, but this requires a 4sight subscription. Instead, I’m using a push notification driver offered by Brightsky. The push driver should work with Android as well.

Pre-requisites

• iPhone or Android
• Push Notification Driver (installed by dealer) from Extra Vegetables (Review Here)

Step 1: Event Programming
In composer pro, you’ll select the Yale Driver and expand it. There you’ll find 6 different variables that are set. We will be using LAST_ACTION_DESC. This variable holds what the the last performed action was. When it changes is what we want to evaluate.

Step 2: The Meat
This took me a few tests to figure out what the text was when different events took place (Key Unlock, Key Lock, Manual Unlock, Manual Lock, RF Unlock, RF Lock, Code Unlock, Code Lock). Those were the basic events I was looking for. What I’ve found is a few events are missing. I’ve contacted Yale to see if more configuration options would be made available and they have mentioned that there should be an update to the driver in Q2 2012.

It’s pretty straight forward; I wanted to be notified whenever anyone but my wife and I entered a code. So what I do first is evaluate the variable to see if it is equal to Keypad Unlock. Afterwards, I evaluate the User_Name that was used. In my example, I check for Bonnie and Eric, if it is not equal to them, and then proceed with the push notification. With the push driver, I populate the User_Name variable so it notifies me almost instantly when someone unlocks the door.

Alternatively, you can use Keypad Unlock event from the driver and remove the first line. (Screenshots to come)

Conclusion
It’s that simple. If you have 4sight and you want to use email notifications, then you’ll follow those usual steps, unfortunately I haven’t gone that route because I didn’t want to spend the money for the subscription; instead I purchased a 20$ driver.

I’m waiting for a driver update and hoping they add a little more functionality, but from my understanding, the Yale Lock is offering a lot more configuration options than the Kwikset ones. Is it worth the investment? Wait for my review to find out!

Alternate Method
You can use the default action of “Keypad Unlocked” as seen below and exclude the first conditional statement listed in the pic above.

- Eric B

Well, this weekend we will find out. The FedEx guy just dropped an HC800 off, ahead of the anticipated delivery date.

I’ll make sure and let everyone know how things go with the new controller, and how much the GUI is improved with these new processors.

Control4 released this promo video and it looks mighty impressive. I have high hopes for this thing.

You can click on the new page you see above (Can C4 really be DIY) to get the full scoop, but here I’ll tell you this. These guys are great. They can be as hands on or hands off as you want. The understand that us DIY guys exist, and they cater to people like you and I. Guys who want to get their hands dirty a little bit. They won’t refuse to help you identify equipment bought on flea-bay or C4Forums, they won’t charge you $400 to add your new Bluray Player, etc…

They will be posting things on the blog from time to time. Make them feel welcome. They can both be contacted directly at jim@c4diy.com or rich@c4diy.com.

Welcome guys…we’re happy to have you!

1) Create a number variable, with appropriate name (“Panic” in our case)
2) Figure out what you want to do to trigger the event. We used a triple tap on a six button keypad.
3) Go to the keypad, and on that key (for 1.8 and later) look for the triple tap button. If you don’t have the triple tap feature, you’ll have to program around that using a variable that counts taps, or just program it on a press/release
4) “When the six button is triple tapped..” should be in the middle of your screen now.
5) On the right hand side, look for your variable. (“Panic”)
6) You’ll want to drag over the following elements:
Increment the variable +1
Set the variable to 0
If the variable = 1
If the variable = 0
7) Create a timer, with a name (“Panic”), that’s repeating, and a duration of 2 seconds.
Go to the timer on the left side, and choose “When the Panic timer expires”
9) On the right hand side, choose your actions. In our example, we want to toggle some lights on and off. Note that you can’t easily toggle a light scene and they take some time to execute, so you might pick a few key elements and toggle those. Drag the toggle lines of code to the middle.
10) Go back to the variable programming for Panic. On the right hand side, choose the timer and drag “start the panic timer” to the middle.
11) If you want to change LED colors to indicate whether or not the Panic mode is activated, you can drag in that code as well under 1 for on and 0 for off.
12) When finished, here’s what our code looks like on the six button:
On the triple tap event:
Increment the panic variable +1
If the variables>Panic is equal to 1
Set an LED color to red
Start the panic timer
Email a notification
If the variables>Panic is equal to 2
Set the variables> Panic to 0
Stop the panic timer
Set an LED color to blue

How are you guys and gals putting timers to good use?

If you’re not familiar with this, watch the demo video below.

The unit he is speaking in to is not the final product. The final product includes a touchpanel from them (looks really nice) as pictured below.

If you have any questions or any specific things you would like me to try and post video of, let me know in the comments.

Oh yeah, and while I can’t say a lot right now, there is more than this from these guys in the pipeline. The part I’m most excited about won’t be available for a little while, but this is a company we need to pay attention to.

The first thing we want to do is create a scheduled event, call it “Maid Code Set” if you want. Have it repeat when you want (ours is weekly on Wednesday), and at the start time you want (11AM). Create another repeating scheduled event “Maid Code Delete”, with your end time (2PM).

Now under programming and scheduler, click the “Maid Code Set” event. On the right, under actions, choose the Kwikset lock. Under device specific command you have “Set name, code”. Choose that command, and then type in the user id (make sure its not being used already) and the name,code – 15 and maid,1234 for example. Drag that to the middle column. This will set a code for the maid at the start time.

To revoke access, under the “Maid Code Delete” event, choose the lock and select “delete code”. Type in the User ID for the maid (15 in our case), and then drag that to the middle. Now when 2PM rolls around, this scheduled event will execute and delete the code from the lock. When the code is attempted to be used after that time, it won’t work, denying access.

Voila! Note: Use this programming at your own risk! We can’t be held responsible and are just giving you a programming idea. Enjoy!