Recently Apple Homekit has been indicating that there’s a firmware update for my Schlage Touchscreen Deadbolt. How do I update my lock??
In a world where more and more is becoming automated, it’s a tricky balance for engineers to decide whether it makes sense for a smart home device like a deadbolt to auto-update or wait until you can do the update manually. This is considerably more tricky when the update might disable the device for a few minutes or longer: After all, you don’t want to be standing outside in the snow, tapping your lock code just to have it fail and a status message on your phone say “updating: 11 minutes left.”
Schlage took the path of requiring you to always update the Touchscreen Deadbolt manually, which is probably the smartest option. Figuring out that’s what needs to happen can be a challenge unto itself, however, as the indicator is not at all obvious, and doubly so if you just use Apple Homekit (aka Siri) to interact with the lock as it won’t tell you it’s time for an update!
Instead, you get a “!” indicator on the device and it’s up to you to figure out what that means. For example, when my deadbolt needed to be updated, here’s what I saw on my iPhone X:
See the “Front Room Deadbolt” warning? You can’t tap on it to find out what it means because that’s the on/off gesture. On the iPhone X there’s the harder press of a force-tap, which does reveal a more detailed control and, yes, some information about what the “!” icon means:
But where do you update the firmware? In the Schlage app! It’s called Sense, somewhat confusingly, but launch it and you’ll be able to do all sorts of useful things including fine tune the settings for your deadbolt, add and remove special codes for friends and workers, etc.
Curiously, at this point in the app, there’s no indication that there’s an update available. One would expect something like a status line somewhere on the screen! Ah well, since you know that there is an update, tap on the gear icon in the lower left. That’s where 99% of your interaction with the app will happen anyway.
Here’s what the settings main screen looks like:
Still no indication! 🙂 Tap on “Lock Information” to check and confirm that there’s a firmware update really available and ready to download.
Note before you tap that there are other features you can enable and disable too. Not sure what they do? Check the Schlage Web site for detailed info about all of these options. You can see my settings…
The Lock Information screen is actually pretty interesting:
I’ve highlighted the key information; finally there’s an indication that there is indeed a firmware update available! They should highlight it too, actually, as it is pretty important to keep your firmware updated at all times. Either way, to proceed tap on the Firmware Version information and it will move you to the firmware update instructions screen:
The important things to notice here are that you can’t use your deadbolt – or phone! – for the duration of the update, and that the phone should be physically near the lock. Ready? Sure you don’t need either for 15-20 minutes? Then tap on the blue “Begin Update” button.
Now you’ll see a very subtle progress bar as it meanders along:
16 minutes and 60 seconds later (okay, maybe it was just 15 minutes or so) it completes the update without any particular fanfare or even a “success” screen. Next time you look at the Sense app on your smartphone it’ll simply show you the following:
Yup, looks exactly like you just installed your Schlage deadbolt for the first time and the app’s giving you a quick tour of all the new features. Check it out – I mean, why not? – or tap on “Skip tour”.
Go back to the Lock Information screen and this time it’s the newer firmware version and there’s no indication that an update is available:
That’s it. Done. Your Schlage Touchscreen Deadbolt lock firmware is now up to date. Congrats!