I just updated the hardware on my front door to one of the Schlage touchscreen deadbolts after watching your video review. Love it! But… how do I set a remote access code?
Glad you liked my review of the Schlage Touchscreen Deadbolt. I have to say that it’s quickly become a favorite in my family, a great way to ensure that no-one ever has to worry about keeping track of their house keys or even the ever-likely possibility that a key is lost during a bike ride or other adventure. And different codes for different people coupled with a logging mechanism so I can see who unlocked the door when? Super useful.
Problem is, I’m not always home when I need to let someone gain access to the house.
Fortunately, with the addition of the Nexia Home Intelligence “Bridge” unit (about $50 street price + $9.99/mo subscription) you have complete control over the Touchscreen Deadbolt and every other Z-Wave device in your home from anywhere you can get an Internet connection. That $9.99/mo? Annoying, actually. My commentary: Nexia should be a free subscription for under 10 devices.
But back to this. If you have the Nexia Home Bridge and have it hooked up and configured with your Schlage deadbolt, and have the iPhone app from Nexia installed too (still with me?) it’s surprisingly easy to set up a temporary code.
Start up the app, and enter your PIN to start:
Since I only have one device, the list of Z-Wave devices is, well, a bit sparse:
See the “i” in the circle on the top right? Tap on it to get to additional information about this particular unit.
The results:
You can see that I have four different codes set for my front door.
To set a temporary code, you can simply set another code by tapping “Add User Code” and then remembering to delete it, or you can just tap on “Temporary Code” to set one that’s only going to work for 24 hours.
Choose the latter — it’s easier! — and…
I’ll enter an easily remembered four digit code, then tap “SET”.
Tip: This is not my real door code, so don’t rush over to my house and try it! 🙂
After a few moments it’s all set and ready to use:
Conveniently, as I was writing this I needed to set a temp access code for my own house while I was 1000mi away. In a matter of less than a minute it was all set up, and when my friend unlocked the front door, sure enough, it showed up in the activity log in the Nexia app:
That’s it. Incredibly easy and rather fun to have that level of remote power…