Don’t do it! I purchased a MiLocks lock and it never worked – not once. Now, I’m looking for another lock to replace it.
Not a lot of discussion on this one, so thought I would post my experience with installing this product. I am fairly tech-savvy and have a decent number of smarthome products - smart switches, thermostat, camera, etc. and thought a smart door lock that is Alexa enabled would be a good thing to have in the collection. We just moved to a new home so we needed to put in a new lock anyway so this one looked and sounded good. Reviews were pretty sparse - there were a couple good reviews on Amazon but they looked pretty fake. And on Woot there was only one that says “Dont’ do it!” so I was skeptical, but decided to do it anyway.
Once it came in (very quickly I might add) I decided to set up the lock (I went about it stepwise - did not actually install the lock on the door but just assemble it loosely to make sure everything worked before I removed the deadbolt on our main door.
Put the EQL Pentagon puck where I thought would be good, turned it on, paired with the app, and everything was going well until it was time for the app to connect the puck to wifi - and it connected but when it tried to download a firmware update it failed. I tried twice more, each time there was a fail with different error messages. There was a link to a FAQ that the app kept trying to send me to - so I finally decided to read that FAQ. And there was the first shocker. It expects the puck to be within 3m of the wifi router. There went my idea of putting the puck in the family room. I tried various locations in the house (close to the door where the lock would be) but no success. I was about to pack everything to send back, but decided to just pair it up by keeping them close by. Put both the lock and the puck in the same room where the router is, and this time everything went smoothly. Firmware downloaded, lock paired and now I could open and close the lock from the app. Then I installed the deadbolt, and by trial and error, figured out a place to mount the puck (had to hang it on the wall) so it was able to get a decent wifi signal and yet be close to the lock. I do get a timeout every now and then but so far things have mostly worked. Asking Alexa to lock the front door has also worked very smoothly, so other than the pain of installation process, it works pretty well.
So, moral of the story, first install the app, pair with the puck and the lock by putting everything in the same room as your router. Then try to find a place to mount the puck so it is not too far from your router and the lock. It does work, and works fairly well. I get notification every time the door is opened or closed, and I can even set up rules to lock the door after 10 minutes of closing the door if i forget to lock it. Nice.
A little over 10 months after installing, the lock failed. I thought it just needed new batteries - so put fresh batteries in, but nope. Servo does not lock any more. Unlocks fine. I am guessing the internal gears are wearing off - probably plastic parts inside. Its a bummer since it worked really well until now. Submitted a service request - lets see what happens.