“How Do I…” use my Black and Decker lock?

May 21, 2010

Curious what the Black and Decker locks can do when combined with Control4?

Once you get your door lock added to your system, there are all kinds of ways you can program with it. First, at the bottom left of composer you need to go to monitoring. At the top left (device events) select the door lock. Now on the right make sure the top tab says properties and you will see a screen with a lot of fields for you to fill in.

On this screen you can enter a name(username) followed by a *.* then the code you want that person to use to unlock the door. In programming there will be some options like username which is the name you enter in these fields. There is also usercode, that is the number to the right of the word Code, NOT the actual code that lets them get in the door. You’ll notice that after you enter the unlock code, it eventually turns into ***** to hide it.

Now it’s time to see what we can program. If you go to programming on the bottom left and then at the top left (device events) select your door lock, there is a box in the middle left with a drop down box. Here is a screen shot of what is in the drop down box.

Two of the options are locked manually and unlocked manually. That means the door lock was moved with a key and not the key pad. Unlocked/Locked means the door lock was moved by someone using the key pad. Not locked, means the lock didn’t fully lock possibly due to it being jammed. Incorrect code lockout, means that there were 3 in a row unsuccessful attempts to unlock a door. Invalid schedule, means that the code entered on the keypad was correct but it was being used outside of the time you setup in programming. The rest are pretty self explanatory.

I’m going to show one example in this write-up. I’m going to have the system email me anytime a certain user unlocks a certain door, so I’m going to chose “unlocked” on the middle left. On the right side of composer(device actions) I’m going to choose the same lock that we selected on the left side. You will notice a + sign next to the lock, click on it to expose some variables.

For this write up I’m going to select “username”. Below that I select the conditional tab, which gives you two options to choose from. I selected the first radio button and next to that selected “=”. Next to the “=” sign I type in the username I want to monitor. I typed in *paul*, you want to make sure you type this in exactly like you did on the monitoring screen we looked at first. Now drag this command to the middle.

Next you need to have an email template set up. If you want a quick review on that CLICK HERE.
Now on the right side of composer(device actions) scroll down to “Email Notification”. Below that beside “Template” select the box and choose the email. For me it’s called “Paul unlocked front door”.

Now I drag this command on top of the ? in the middle pane (script) so that it indents underneath it. It should look like this.

There are many other things you can do. You can restrict the time of day for which a code is good. You can also program a code to delete right after it’s been used, or put it on a timer to delete after so much time. These are just a few ideas of the many that are possible with this door lock.

hope you enjoyed
pharmdsmith