For example, you can remotely grant 2 hours of access to a tradesman to enter your property and fix something.
You can grant access to realtors to enter your property that is for sale, and you can track how many times they were there and how much time they spent on each visit.
You can grant the cleaning person access between 9am and 1pm on Wednesdays.
You can get into your house with any BLE-enabled device. Even if you lose your phone, you could borrow the neighbor's phone, run the appropriate app, enter the correct PIN, and gain entry. Then give them back their phone and they have no more access to your home than they did before you used it.
Of course, you can argue - a physical key or a keycard doesn't require batteries. But, a keycard can be erased or scrambled or lost. Then you need to quickly reprogram the lock so whoever finds it can't use it. Impossible with a traditional lock, and varying degrees of difficulty with a keycard system.
From the article. Particularly useful for: AirBnB hosts, people with roommates, friends/family visiting, etc.
The key was encrypted based on a username and password and I could revoke it at will. It filled a need for the time he stayed at my place and worked great.
Or you could have visited the locksmith (or your local hardware store with a key department) and gotten 1 or more spares in minutes.
If it was my mom, sure then I would have had to do the locksmith route.
It's helpful for friends, dog-walkers, etc. Also, no keys to misplace! (I rarely drive.)
However, I use a simple PIN-code lock, not a phone-based lock. I'm not sure the phone system is worth the extra overhead for me.
I can't wait until I can ditch the wallet too...
Edit: I've had the Schlage keypad locks for about 3 years now without any problems. I haven't even had to replace a battery yet.
I used to work in a factory that had a reasonable quality push button mechanical lock in combination with insurance grade cylinder lock on a sturdy door. That cylinder lock was sometimes left "on the latch" when people were working there.
One night (they worked night shifts) a guy got access by brute-forcing the pin-combination lock. It took him (there was CCTV) about 7 minutes to get in.
You can use longer codes, order matters, and they throttle failed passcode attempts to prevent brute-force attacks.
What does a battery-operated keypad lock do better than a mechanical one? EDIT: Or were you being sarcastic?
In addition to the other use cases that folks have replied: You are young now, but you will find there are older people whose hands do not work quite so well. Keys, bottles, and a host of other items that you take for granted with well-working hands become serious obstacles to daily living.
[I should add that arthritis can hit even young people.]
If you don't understand the truth of that statement for some people, then consider yourself lucky.
If you were to design a new access system today from scratch, would you set it up so that A) you give everyone the same 2 character password B) you don't give anyone a username and C) anyone can give anyone else admin credentials with no authentication?
Probably not, but this is the way regular house keys work. Lockitron represents a step in fixing that. Keys worked fine in the 20th century when matter was difficult to work with. This won't be the case for the 21st century.
False security? In what way? False as in they don't do anything? Or false in that they give you a false sense of security?
Deadbolts prevent the most casual of crime and crime of opportunity. Which I would argue is probably the most prevalent type of crime.
works just fine there.
Also, keep in mind that Lockitron is obviously shooting for the consumer market, where concerns about sharing keys are basically non-existent. Commercial users who actually have to frequently deal with key revocations have been using RFID and other per-user access management technologies for ages.
That's a lot of startups up there. A lot
Sometimes you see job openings and you read their business model and you think "really?!"
Before this lock, my wife would leave the front door unlocked in the morning until the cleaners showed up hours and hours later. I'm not a fan of having my house unlocked, and I wasn't really interested in giving the cleaners a key that they could use anytime they wanted.
What is my alternative other than having my house sit unlocked until my wife gets home in the evening?
Now I can experience a much bigger problem if I'm mugged again.
My driveway is four cars deep and two wide, so my various housemates all have to make a copy of their key available so we can move any cars blocking us in. If we could just generate a sub-key, that'd be much more convenient.
Similarly, how about the ability to easily give a temporary house key to your visiting friends/family without having to have n spare keys sitting around? (Right now we have a re-programmable keypad, but if we could generate temporary subkeys without either giving out the master code or programming in a subcode, that'd be ideal.)
What do you not understand?