MQTT Feedback (and a small general feedback as extra)

Good morning all,

The smart locks had still been one of the failure points in my domotic.

I tried a lot of solutions on the market:

  • Nuki 2.0 with official bridge or DIY bridge solutions (slow reactivity, permanent pooling needed, some 503 errors using the bridge)
  • Danalock ZWave (good reactivity but the state was not always up to date)
  • Danalock Zigbee (good reactivity but the smart lock was losing zigbee connection after some time - it seems to be fixed a few days ago according to the deconz forum)
  • Airbnk (slow reactivity, permanent pooling needed, not really reliable using DIY ESP32 due to the poor bluetooth connection)

Reagrding the smart lock itself and especially ergonomics, Nuki is for me the best on the market currently.
It’s the only smartlock which uses a LED as an open indicator and it’s useful to know quickly what it’s the state of your door.
You can also push a button to open or close the door, or turn the wheel like a key, you have both possibilities. Danalock and Airbnk use only the second one, and I prefer the first one in a daily use.
The Lock’n’go feature offered by Nuki when you leave your home is also useful and the other smart locks will not be able to propose this feature since they have no button.

That being said, let’s talk about the MQTT protocol because I was highly expecting this feature.

The Nuki team met my expectations.

  • MQTT works as expected and as documented in the first try
  • You got the last message published when you subscribe to a MQTT topic, it’s useful to know it works and to get the latest state without to have to receive a new message
  • The reactivity time is so much better than bluetooth. It feels like instant.

What I’m missing?

  • Updating the MQTT server informations. For now, you have to set a specific hostname in your network with the default MQTT port.

if you recognize yourself in my message, do not hesitate to go for Nuki Pro, Nuki finally offers something robust in the world of smart locks for who needs reliability and reactivity.

Thanks to the team for the work.

2 Likes

Great development indeed . Would like to explore if I can decrease my dependency of NUKI Web through making a local MQTT link with my Homey. Have seen some incidental delays in broadcasting the unlock event from NUKI → NUKI Web → Homey of up to 15 min. Pretty sure these where server related incidents and normally it’s working flawlessly. But given that this link triggers disarming the alarm a solid backup is a nice to have.

Is there already any documentation of the MQTT integration published? Thx