Ultraloq WiFi locks

My BLE Ultraloq works ok, though I'm not managing it with the ESPHome BLE bridge - there was an attempt to make that happen a year or two ago, not sure where it ended up. My 2 Wifi Ultraloqs are terrible. Battery life sucks, wifi connectivity is garbage. I disassembled the 2 units and hard-wired power to them because the 4x AAs were depleting so quickly. One of the units frequently jams and forgets which side the bolt is set on. Haven't tested the Z-wave variant, but I would advise caution if considering this brand.

Excerpt saved from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive on 2026-10-23.

I just replaced all my Ultraloq WiFi locks (nice industrial design but awful wifi implementation) with Schlage BE499 locks, and set them up using the really nice guide at https://nils.schimmelmann.us/2025-03-19-schlage-encode-plus-home-assistant/ . This creates a hybrid Apple HomeKit / HomeAssistant using Matter to communicate with the locks (you do need an AppleTV or similar to act as a Matter bridge). So far it's been rock solid; HomeKey works for the whole family and I have lock/unlock and current state in HomeAssistant.

Excerpt saved from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive on 2026-10-23.