rossggg
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Level Keypad now available to order, compatible with HomeKit-enabled Level locks
rgw1469 said:sbdude said:rgw1469 said:Unfortunately, bluetooth transport is a death sentence for smart devices. You will not be able to reliably trust this with automations and it will more often have a big red "No Response" label under it in the Home app. -
Flying with Apple's AirTag: When 'boring' is genuinely high praise
pulseimages said:I always groan when some app opens Apple Maps instead of Google Maps.AppleInsider said:Later, at the gate, the Find My app let me know my bag had made its way to the plane. When we landed in LaGuardia, I saw it make its way to the baggage claim area.
AirTag isn't precise enough to let me know with pinpoint accuracy where my bag was on the carousel itself, but that's OK. This isn't an interesting or exciting product. It's a puck the size three stacked quarters, powered by a coin battery.
My only complaint about this experience is that the only notification option available for an AirTag, "Notify when Found", will send an alert the next time the tag's position is updated by ANY device participating in the Find My Network. It would be helpful if there were also a similar "Notify when Nearby" notification that would alert me the next time the tag is detected by my device directly. It would have allowed me to avoid keeping the Find My app open and watching for the button to change. I believe Tile and/or Trackr offer an option like that, though it was a little flakey when I last tried it. -
Review: Level Lock is the invisible smart home lock with HomeKit for your front door
mike1 said:This looks interesting. I'm in the market for a Smart Lock and was leaning towards the new August WiFi. The only thing that gives me pause with the Level is changing the battery. Even though they claim it will last a year, changing the battery looks like it will be a mini-project in itself, as everything needs to come apart again. -
Review: Level Lock is the invisible smart home lock with HomeKit for your front door
I’ve had this lock for a couple of months now and, overall, it has been a pretty great experience. Sending commands to it using HomeKit has been more reliable than with the previous August Pro lock I had installed. I also really appreciate that lock maintains the appearance of any standard American door lock, as the August lock frequently baffled visitors who weren’t sure how to grab and turn it.
The main downsides are that the app and feature list are pretty barebones compared with the August lock. I preferred the auto-unlock feature with August that did not require me to pull out and unlock my phone to confirm a prompt. As long as I approached the door with an authenticated device in my pocket, the August would just do it’s thing and unlock. I also really enjoyed the open-close sensor on the later model August lock that simply required you to place or embed small magnet to/in the door frame and it would detect the proximity of the lock to the magnet with enough precision to know if the door was even just ajar and prevent it from trying to auto-lock. Since the Level Lock installation already requires replacing the strike and the strike plate, it seems like a missed opportunity that they didn’t embed a similar sensor paired with a magnet inside the strike plate.
On that note, the other downside to the Level Lock is that installation did get quite a bit more involved than the other retrofit smart locks I have tried in the past. The motor, strike, and strike plate all required my door and frame to be within more rigid tolerances in order to assemble and work together. I imagine on newer homes, where the doors had their mechanism holes cut out with factory precision, it’s not an issue, but on my door where the holes were seemingly cut at the time of installation with less specialized tools the motor and strike parts would not fit together inside the door and the strike plate would not fit in the recess where the old strike plate resided. I had to break out my dremel tool (actually a nail grinder for pets that turned out to accept standard dremel bits and attachments perfectly) and make some adjustments to both before I could properly install the lock. -
Where the 2013 Mac Pro went right -- and wrong