Has anyone found the secret sauce to pairing Schlage locks?

I posted something here in 2017 because I was having problems then, and now, I’m having problems again. I just can’t seem to get the Schlage FE469NX hunk of junk deadbolt lock to pair with my Aeotec Gen 5 Z-Stick. I’ve un-enrolled it, soft reset the stick, reset the lock to factory defaults, and tried again (and again…and again…and again…maybe 30-40 times or more) with no luck. The red X is burned into my brain even when I close my eyes.

Aside from tossing this thing into a burning pile of garbage and spending another couple hundred dollars on a new lock, does anyone have suggestions on how to get this connected so I can use it???

Your help – and psychotherapy – would be appreciated…

Some locks need to be physically close to the Z-Wave stick during this process. I don’t know if it is truly required or not, but I have paired my Schlage locks when they were within a foot or two successfully.

Also be sure to exclude before the inclusion process.

Hopefully someone else has more ideas for you.

John, I’ve tried with the stick anywhere from touching the pad to a max of about three feet. Unfortunately, it didn’t help.

Locks must be securely included (naturally) and if I recall, there is also a time component to secure inclusion. I think you have to factory reset the lock and then begin the inclusion within 15 seconds from the reset.

Are you trying to use the inclusion button on the Z-Stick to include it? It’s generally recommended to not do that and start the inclusion from within openHAB. I don’t know if that’ll help, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve tried it that way.

When I added my Schlage BE469 (using a Zooz stick), I powered my Raspberry Pi with a USB power pack so that I could get it close enough.

Russ, do you have any detail on that process (within OpenHab)?

Ditto @rpwong comment. I have seen @chris state that for secure inclusion it has to be included via OH, not using the button.

Bob, do you have any detail or a link on that process?

You mean: Inbox–>Zwave binding–Scan, while zstick in in server running OH.? Then doing what the Schlage manual says to start inclusion while scan is going?

Hmmm… I’ll give that a try. Thanks!

The comments about the time limit by @JustinG, closeness to the device by @jswim788 and power of the USB zstick by @rpwong are based on the limited time the binding gives to initialize a battery device. Farther away and lower power mean longer initialization, and if it doesn’t get far enough along before time is up means you may have to start over (but try to rewake the device a few times first.) You are looking for five lines on the UI page.
Screenshot 2021-09-10 172956

This isn’t quite correct. You can reset the lock whenever you like, but the secure inclusion (which includes a secure key exchange process) must complete within 15 seconds of the device being included into the network. This is why you need to include via the binding - in theory, you could include using the button on the stick - but you’d need to get the stick into your computer, start OH and the ZWave binding for it to complete the secure handshake - all within 15 seconds, and practically, that’s likely all but impossible.

This is also possible - generally this is not required now, but it was a requirement in “the old days” for devices to join securely only using low power, and this set the range limit. These days it’s required to use high power, but some older devices might still implement this.

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Chris @chris and Bob’s @apella12 suggestions worked!
Thanks for the help, and I learned something new today.

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