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Comment by gigantor | Hacker News Reader

Playing devil's advocate here, but what is the hype surrounding this lock?

I bought two 'aesthetic enough' keypad code locks from Home Depot and it' been serving me well since. It doesn't require my phone or launching an app from my phone (think bags of groceries in both hands and you forgot to preunlock), doesn't require Wi-Fi, and I can program temporary codes for Airbnb, etc. within seconds. The only draw back is lacking the option to increase 30 second autolock interval.

Add a keypad, make it as rugged as existing locks, place it in the Home Depot lock aisle beside the other 'uncool' locks and you have a disruptive winner.

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Consider everyone who lives in an apartment who doesn't have the option of replacing their lock (and I wouldn't really want to anyway... I rather prefer the unchanged external appearance of this product).

IIRC, you can also easily deauthorize users, so it's also the cheapest way I can think of to retrofit something into being a shared space where you want to be able to control access going forward.

It's not the perfect lock solution for every use case, but it's a really cool utility for a lot of purposes.

So .. it stops physical keys from working?

No, you just don't give them out in the first place.

No, it doesn't. Presumably the parent is describing a situation in which a temporary guest wouldn't receive a physical key at any time, but would have temporary access through the app.

> Consider everyone who lives in an apartment who doesn't have the option of replacing their lock

I've lived in apartments. Giving other people access to your apartment is - in general - a horrible idea. I let guests into my apartment. Personally. It's a pretty straightforward workflow, believe it or not.

It's great because you don't NEED a keypad. Also, for people who rent and can't replace their locks, this gets them all the functionality a keypad lock can give.

No, but you do NEED a smartphone. So I'm out.

Anyway, I have a regular dumb keypad deadbolt on my front door, and that works just fine. I don't have any needs that Lockitron would fill that the current lock doesn't.

> (think bags of groceries in both hands and you forgot to preunlock)

I can imagine someone implementing an app that unlocks the door for you automatically when your phone gets back on the home WiFi network.

>think bags of groceries in both hands and you forgot to preunlock

If you've got both your hands busy, whichever keylock system is on your door is irrelevant. Only a voice activation system would be Ok.

Lockitron can unlock based on proximity to a Bluetooth 4.0 phone

I practice (though uncomfortably) I am able to extend at least two fingers, enough to enter a 4 digit code and turn the knob. Unlocking vie the phone with two grocery bags is not so easy.

I'm curious how it works. There must be some servo activating the physical lock, right? How can it operate if the power goes out?

A backup battery would seem to be an obvious solution there. Every lock like this that I've seen also has a standard physical keyed lock as a backup.

Lockitron is entirely battery powered and has no external components. It looks like they can send you an alert when the battery runs low.

It's powered by 4x AA batteries, claimed to be good for a year. If that's true it's unbelievably efficient considering the hardware store models also run on 4x AA batteries but don't have a Wi-Fi + Bluetooth radio running all the time.

https://lockitron.com/pdf/lockitron_manual_knob.pdf page 5

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