duped 2 days ago

There are a variety of outdoor rated pushbuttons you can buy that don't have their electrical properties change due to the moisture content of a user's fingertips, or lack thereof.

But just to be clear - the level doesn't have buttons. It has touch sensor on the enclosure to lock/unlock by just touching the lock, while it looks like a plain-old deadbolt. The problem is the sensor is garbage, so it's basically a plain-old-deadbolt but costs 5 times as much

2
solardev 2 days ago

I've used the cheapo Wyze Lock (https://www.wyze.com/products/wyze-lock?variant=423027510806...), which is a deadbolt-only replacement with the $20 keypad (https://www.wyze.com/products/wyze-lock-keypad?srsltid=AfmBO...) and it's worked well for a few years. The buttons never gave me any issues, and indeed I use that instead of the app to unlock.

After a few years and several doors/apts, the deadbolt itself seems to be showing some issues sometimes (have to pull the door close tightly for it to lock right)... I'm not sure if that's a door alignment issue or maybe a thermal freeze/thaw issue or something... need to debug it further... but it's a lot cheaper and more reliable (and uglier) than most smart locks I've tried, including the much fancier ones.

seanmcdirmid 2 days ago

Level has a keypad as an extra, so I thought you were talking about that. They also support NFC, but that has nothing to do with capacitive sensors. Anyways, I never heard anything good about that lock and so never bothered trying it. The Schlage Encode Plus is pretty reliable (I researched a bunch of reviews before buying) for how up I use it, if only it weren’t so ugly.