So this was a painful a failed experiment. The Deadbolt I have is not specifically listed on the Almond 3 supported devices page. but I went ahead and tried to add it. The door is far from the main A3 that contains the zwave dongle. so I added some plugin lamp modules and placed them in between. This strategy had worked for getting a Dragon single pole wall switch connected. It did not work with the lock. someone responded to me that for locked in particular the zawave connection needed to be a single hop.
That is when I got stupid. I disconnected the main Almond 3 and brought it to next to the door. I tried to make it connect and it refused several times. but one time the lock gave a green check mark, and the Almond continued to say connecting. I made a bad assumption that the reason it never finished was that the almond needed to be connected to the internet. so back down to my server room (aka tool shop) i went. I came back up with the verizon router and the power adapter, and the longest piece of coax I could find. I got the router and almond set up by the door and tried again. now I could not get it to add or remove. the lock. I could no longer get the lock to connect back to the Staples connect it had been connected to before. I was freaking out. I did a factory reset on the lock. no change I did a remove all devices on the almond (fortunately this was only the 3rd device and I have not yet tried tha several others) no change. Then I had to go away on business for a week. This was the locck on the backdoor so I thought it would not be a major issue. but then the batteries died in the lock on the front door. fortunately my wife had the sense to use the MyQ app to get in through the garage. (having two smart locks has always been my fail-safe strategy for dead batteries) (and by the way the front door lock burns through 4 AA batteries about every 3 weeks in my house).
So when I came back from my trip I had to get this fixed.
I called Schlage.... I did actually get through to someone on a Saturday. And he told me that schlage does not work with Securifi Almond 3. He also said that I had probaly succeeded in "half pairing" the Almond 3. I could not do anything until I undid that.
So I took the almond and the verizon router back up to the door. disrupting the internet for my house once again.
This did not work.
So this morning I finally decided to move the lock to the Router, and leave the router in it's normal place. This would have the added advantage of being right next to the staples connect so if I could undo the "half pairing" I would have a shot at getting back to where I was 10 days ago.
For some reason this worked on the first try. I unpaired the lock from the almond 3 and then paired it back to the staples connect where it had work fine for two years.
1) beware of half pairings.
2) when pairing devices a single hop is best (with locks this is required)
3) specific model numbers of schlage locks are supported. but that does not mean all schlage locks are supported.
4) it only took four screws to remove the lock from the door, all things considered moving the lock to the hub was much easier that moving the hub to the lock.
5) I still want to get rid of the staples connect but at his time the Almond is not the solution for the locks.