Episode: 4339
Title: HPR4339: Review of the YR01 smart lock
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4339/hpr4339.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 23:19:20

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4339 for Thursday the 20th of March 2025.
Today's show is entitled Review of the YR01 Smart Lock.
It is the 20th show of Rowan and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The Summary is Rowan Reviews is recently installed Yammery by R01 Fingerprint Smart
Knob.
Hi and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I just want to give a quick sort of intro review to a keyless entry door lock system
I purchased recently for our house.
My significant other wanted one so that she no longer had to dig her keys out of her purse
when we were coming and going.
Plus our girls are of an age early teens where I would just weren't quite sure of them
keeping track of keys to the house but like they do get to come and go so we were just
wanted to have the convenience of giving them access without needing to worry about
losing their keys.
So I ended up looking around and I found the Yammery Fingerprint Smart Lock.
Not so big on the Fingerprint issue, I mean that just happened to be one of the features
it has.
It has actually quite a number of nice features.
It does have a regular hard keys you can use to get in and it comes with two of those
for backup.
It does actually have key fobs you can use so I guess it uses Bluetooth Lower Energy
BLE for communication so you can have key fobs.
It does allow you to enter or create any number I haven't looked at the max but a number
of different pen based entries to give it to different people that are easy to change
and like I said it does come with a fingerprint connection also.
You can also buy a, it does not have Wi-Fi built in but they have a Bluetooth Wi-Fi gateway
you can purchase which I did buy I'll talk about another episode.
So you can then actually connect via Wi-Fi and gives you a little bit of range.
You can do it from wherever you are if you want and it also lets you attach to like
Alexa and Siri and various things.
So that's really what bought me on it was all the various things.
It was a key lock, it did come up with backup keys, it had a number of different ways
to do entry to meet whatever need or comfort level you felt with a keyless entry system.
It also has a nice idea to realize when we bought it and installed it in case the battery
runs out and say you don't have your keys with you there is a USB port on the outside
so you could connect it to your phone which lets you power it up long enough to like
add your entry in so it will unlock and then you can replace the batteries.
It runs on four AA alkaline batteries, it does recommend alkaline and not any kind of
rechargeable or the lithium ions that are out these days and they say you should get
about six months out of the system.
Again is a pretty easy, I would say if you have a newer door or that your door actually
has like a standard knob on it so this unit instead of covering up a deadbolt or providing
a deadbolt over top of your door handle it replaces the door handle and so you replace
your normal door handle with it and if the hole is already pre-gilled to like a nice circle
that's at least two inches in diameter I would say you could do this hole change out
in 15 minutes. Unfortunately mine turned into a project because it is an older door,
the door knob that was on it doesn't look that old, this used to be a rental and we actually
were renting and then just recently purchased and the door had basically enough of like
a hole cut out in the middle and some wasn't even really a hole, more like a shaped void
to let the door and the hardware pass through so that you could connect the outside door
knob with the inside door knob and I don't actually have like a big circular lock drill bit
and I debated going to get it but then because there was already a hole I didn't think it
was going to be easy to make a nice sort of cut through what was already there plus the
wood was already in kind of bad shape, it's kind of laminated in the middle at least
where the lock is and like the wood was already sort of loose and it was just I don't know,
it wasn't the best condition, it wasn't the best situation so I just sort of took my drill bit
and I used to have a big drill bit as sort of my grinding tool and I just ground, round
and round until I got about a big enough circular hole that the hole unit could go through
and it didn't look like it was going to be putting pressure in the wrong places and knocking
things out of alignment so you know a 15 minute job turned into probably a two hour job
plus because I kept having to try to fit pieces in and I kept screwing things in and out
the wood was starting to fall apart and I was like so I wood glued, took wood glue and
was like trying to re-laminate the wood pieces and I think it all worked out, it feels sturdy
enough but it definitely turned into a big process kind of messy around the door to clean up
nicely but it did take one trip to the hardware store because the older screws were basically
starting to strip out so I went and got bought newer screws that were a little longer and slightly
thicker to helpfully bite into the wood and in the end it all worked out but it did turn into
a process so I don't hold that against the company their instructions are you know we're good
comes with a pamphlet and then they have a number of just sort online videos with QR codes
in the right in the pamphlet that you can click and watch basically you have your outside
handle and unit that has the keypad on it and the fingerprint reader that then has bolts or
screw stands that slide through that then attach that you slide the inside unit on the inside
unit has like at the top where like on the outside unit would be the keypad on the inside unit
it's basically a cover that covers up the well the electronics and the battery holder so it's very
simple to to put together you just it's three bolts you know you slide the inside and outside
together and there's three bolts on the inside that screw into this post the way the locking mechanism
works is the outside handle never it only engages you can only like turn the latch whenever it's
it's powered in unlock mode whenever there's no power it just turns but it doesn't engage the latch
so that's that's how it locks as opposed to sort of your your standard hard key latching system
where the knobs always turn but then when you turn the key you're actually engaging you know
the unit so that it prevents the outside door from door knob from turning so this is sort of
the opposite so that's how it works which is why you're locked out if you lose power because
while otherwise your door would automatically unlock if you have if you lost power um
so I I feel pretty good about that like that sort of thing and like I said it does have
multiple ways to have backups in case you run out of power while you're not there um I'm not sure
yet it didn't say then there there's not a lot of instructions the instructions that are there
are good and I haven't watched everything online but I'm assuming at some point there will be a low
battery indication uh voice or something that pops out because of course with everything you do need
an app to do your pairing with bluetooth because it's BLE is the um the method you use to talk to
the unit so that it locks and unlocks it does automatically lock after about five seconds so you
and I I'm not sure if that's just after five seconds after you assuming it's like five seconds
after you've successfully entered your code or told it to unlock it will then automatically lock
for you so you don't have to worry about that and that would make sense particularly with the BLE
because you're using power whenever you're engaging the unlock so I was saying with the um
the door lock system to program it to add your fobs and to do the fingerprints
you have this app and the app is from a company called nice digi and ice d i g i
and the app is very nice uh it has a good interface and from what i'm looking at the website it
looks like the yammery brand that i got is just sort of like a you know a rebranded version of the
nice digi products because they have a bunch of locks and things and i scrolling through seeing the
exact what looks like the exact same model of door lock that i have so when you load up the app
you do have to create an account on their site from what i can tell i think generally speaking
i'm at least i'm assuming of course uh it doesn't send all your information up you know
other than what it needs as far as like you're logged on and then i guess that's how if you have the
the wireless dongle that's probably you have to go through their servers probably to talk
i'm not quite sure yet but like i said i'm trying to save that for another show but the app is nice
you can add your the like i said the key fobs you say okay i want to add a fob and then you pair it
with it puts it i guess in a pairing mode and lets you pair it with the door also like when you
want to add fingerprints you tell it okay i'm adding somebody's fingerprint and then it walks you
through a setup process you basically have to tap your finger a couple times on the door
the scanner while it's setting it up so i guess it grabs enough information to make sure that
it has unique print or i hash of your fingerprint overall everything's been going smoothly my biggest
issue with it i just use the um number you know pin number entry it does require like six to nine
so you know it's fair number i'm not gonna be worried about somebody standing outside trying to get
in for hours but it it because it's so low power it doesn't have like a light or a sensor when
you come close to it and so if it's dark you can't really see the numbers and you have to press
like hit a number for it to like activate and then you have to enter your code so it sort of has
to light up first so sometimes i'm like i hit it it lights up i'm like that i hit my number and even
during the daytime times when you first hit it it takes it a moment so like i'm like okay i hit my
first digit now did it go but it does beep when it it takes so you just have to get used to like
make waiting for it to activate then hitting your starting your codes and listening to make sure
that it's beeping and then there's like a check mark when you're done entering your code to say
you know accept this code and it does work good it took you know a little bit of getting used to
but it wasn't that bad um and so like i said so far the girls love it they have their fingerprint
they just walk up poop and they're in the house i think i did get a little bit of grief this is
the first time i forget she was going to use the keyless entry and i was in the house by myself
and for whatever reason when she left we still have a deadbolt above the lock and i locked the
deadbolt so even though she even though she could use the keyless entry she couldn't get in the house
until i came in unlocked the door although she could have gotten her keys out and unlocked the top
bolt but other than that one instance it's been going very smoothly for everyone so like i said
i would recommend if you're looking for a keyless look at the nice digi products or the
yammery products they have a variety of different models for different situations
um like said installation was easy i like the fact it looks like pretty much all their models
have like backup keys you can use i'm sure they all take fobs all that stuff and um
i guess that sort of wraps it up for this uh mini review thank you for listening and please
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