This week, smart lock maker Level announced a new wifi bridge for its locks to allow “remote access and integrations with smart home technology platforms,” including Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Welcome to 2015, Level.
Instead of adopting what is touted as the future smart home technologies (Matter and Thread), Level has launched the level connection, a $79 Wi-Fi bridge that plugs into an outlet and acts as a bridge between your lock’s Bluetooth radio and your Internet router, so it can be controlled remotely and work with cloud-enabled smart home platforms.
Why is Level resorting to the old ways when it could implement Matter and Thread?
The Wi-Fi bridge was developed for the first smart locks (the August Lock got one in 2015) as a band-aid solution to the energy-sucking effects of Wi-Fi on a smart lock battery. (Changing door lock batteries every two months is no fun.) Most manufacturers have since abandoned the bridge because it adds confusion, complexity and price. No one wants a single-purpose Wi-Fi bridge taking up an outlet in their home when there are other, better solutions. Thread seems like one of those solutions, especially for a battery-powered device like a smart lock.
So, this move puzzled me at first. Level’s pitch is simplicity, a smart lock that doesn’t look like a smart lock. All of the lock technology is packaged inside the deadbolt, not plugged into an outlet. And they already have the technology they need for Matter and Thread.
Last year, Level co-founder and CTO Ken Goto told me that “all Level Locks are 100% compatible with Matter hardware and Thread will be future-compatible because of this. “We are excited that Matter was recently certified and are watching closely to release this capability in a firmware update soon.”
Add Matter on Thread to your locks also Enable remote access and interoperability with more smart home platforms for Level (currently only works with Apple Home and Ring via Amazon Sidewalk). Additionally, Thread has advantages such as lower power consumption and greater reach (it is a mesh network), and Matter works completely locally, so there is no dependency on the cloud.
So why is Level going back to old ways with a Wi-Fi bridge, when it could implement Matter and Thread? When I asked Goto about launching Connect instead of the promised support for Matter and Thread, he said: “Enabling Wi-Fi was an important request from our customers for remote access and integrations with smart home technology platforms . “We are still investigating Matter-over-Thread solutions and will be sure to be in touch once we know what adoption will look like for Level.”
Reading between the lines here, it seems that Level, like other smart lock makers like Schlage and Yale, feels that both Matter and Thread are still too underprepared and too complicated to fully release to their customers.
“We are still investigating Matter-over-Thread solutions.”
Adding Thread to Level would allow out-of-home control through a Thread border router, but compatibility between border routers is complicated. Level would have to ensure that clients connected to the good Thread edge router and not another one somewhere in your house. While Matter would allow support for multiple platforms, Level customers would also need a Matter controller from the appropriate platform for it to work.
When you consider all of these complications and opportunities for confusion, you can see why offering a $79 Wi-Fi bridge seemed like the easiest option, even in 2023. Unfortunately, Matter and Thread has promised too much and underdelivered. sufficient not in the technology itself, but in the technology itself. in simplicity. The new smart home standard is supposed to make it easier to purchase, configure and use smart home products. So far, it’s 0 for 3.
