How it’s done: Connecting Nuki to Home Assistant

We’d like to thank our guest author Michel Sommer of https://www.smart-zilla.com for this great post.

The Nuki app, with its integrated smart actions, lets you control your door easily and automatically. This marks the first step in your home automation journey. Software like Home Assistant is needed to integrate multiple solutions and devices from different smart home brands.

Here are the benefits of integrating Nuki into Home Assistant

Home Assistant is one of the world’s leading smart home systems and offers a wide range of device and provider support. Home Assistant’s open-source approach really won me over: I’ve connected actuators and devices from over ten different manufacturers with Home Assistant. I appreciate not having to depend on a single manufacturer. For example, I can connect my Nuki Smart Lock to my existing alarm system or use the Nuki Door Sensor to switch on my outside lights.

I use the best components from lots of different manufacturers in my home. Home Assistant ensures that the various devices can communicate with ease. Home Assistant also has its own smartphone app for iOS and Android. This means I can control all my devices from the comfort of one app. This eliminates the need to constantly hunt for the right app and makes my everyday life way more convenient.

Here’s how you connect your Nuki Smart Lock to Home Assistant

In order to access all the functions in Home Assistant for your Nuki Smart Lock, you need the “Nuki Lock” integration from the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS). The HACS is a platform developers can use to make the integrations they develop available to other Home Assistant users free of charge. If you already have the HACS installed on your Home Assistant instance, you can complete the installation and configuration in six easy steps:

• Go to “HACS”, “Integrations” and then “Custom Repositories” in Home Assistant. “Repository” refers to all the programming code of an integration.
• Enter the following path under Repository https://github.com/kvj/hass_nuki_ng. Select “Integration” under “Category”.
• Then search for “Nuki Lock” and click on the integration. Then select “INSTALL THIS REPOSITORY WITH HACS” and click “Download”.
• Click “Add integration” under “Settings” – “Integrations”, and search for “Nuki Lock” (do not select “Nuki”).
• The correct IP will be detected automatically, so you only have to enter the API token from your Nuki app under “Bridge API Token”. First, you have to activate the API token in the app under your “Nuki Bridge”. You can freely choose the API token in the app.
• Finally, you can assign your Nuki components to a room and, just like that, Nuki will be available in Home Assistant.

Important: You must be using the Nuki Bridge in order to do this.

Networking options for Nuki via Home Assistant

Once Nuki has been successfully integrated, you can display the status of various sensors (door locked/unlocked or door open/closed) directly in the Home Assistant app. Of course, the Nuki Smart Lock can also be unlocked and locked directly in Home Assistant. I have already listed some possible smart applications above. Of course, there are many other processes you can automate.
Here are a few more ideas:

• If you have a surveillance camera with an integrated siren, you can deactivate the siren when the Nuki Smart Lock is unlocked.
• When the Nuki Smart Lock is unlocked, the TV or your favourite music can be turned on automatically.
• If night mode is activated in your alarm system, an unlocked door can be reported or automatically locked again.

Today, I mainly use the Nuki app to issue access permissions or change the configuration. The Nuki app is regularly updated and is always enhanced with new features. So you definitely shouldn’t delete it from your smartphone.

What can the Nuki app do? The key features at a glance