Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

> If you use an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, you can enable Lockitron to sense when you walk up to the door and unlock for you using Bluetooth 4.0. We call it Sense.

Can it sense which side of the door you are on? If I'm coming in from outside, then having the door unlock as I approach would be useful. If I'm going to the door from inside, to look through the peephole to see who is pounding on the door and yelling for me to open it, I would not find it helpful for the door to unlock itself.

Re: Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

#5

Post by dx4100 » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #4

I'm concerned about this feature, described on their home page: > If you use an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, you can enable Lockitron to sense when you walk up to the door and unlock for you using Bluetooth 4.0. We call it Sense. Can it sense which side of the door you are on? If I'm coming in from outside, then having the door unlock as I approach would be useful. If I'm going to the door from inside, to look through the…

It probably has a proximity timeout -- if you're out of range for more than x number of minutes, it will consider you 'gone'. It may not be passive, and may send you a request via Bluetooth for unlock. I imagine they have this worked out well enough to advertise it :)

Re: Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

#6

Post by robomartin » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

A non-Kickstarter Kickstarter?

Re: Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

#7

Post by dx4100 » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

I'd be interested in how the devices talk to their servers, and if they have control to unlock the devices. It would be smart to have public / private keypairs for each device capable of unlocking, so that even they could potentially not be allowed to unlock it. I want to see if this service gets hacked and someone issues a mass-unlock signal.

Re: Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

#8

Post by lotyrin » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #4

I'm concerned about this feature, described on their home page: > If you use an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, you can enable Lockitron to sense when you walk up to the door and unlock for you using Bluetooth 4.0. We call it Sense. Can it sense which side of the door you are on? If I'm coming in from outside, then having the door unlock as I approach would be useful. If I'm going to the door from inside, to look through the…

Then (as is the answer to many of the security concerns people have with Lockitron) just don't enable that feature.

Also, anyone that's seriously worried about the security of this device should be mostly concerned that the standard keyhole still exists on the other side of the door because they're trivial to bump or pick.

Re: Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

#9

Post by savrajsingh » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

Yeah!!

Re: Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

#10

Post by paulgerhardt » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 9:14 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #4

I'm concerned about this feature, described on their home page: > If you use an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, you can enable Lockitron to sense when you walk up to the door and unlock for you using Bluetooth 4.0. We call it Sense. Can it sense which side of the door you are on? If I'm coming in from outside, then having the door unlock as I approach would be useful. If I'm going to the door from inside, to look through the…

We're experimenting with this feature and really want it to work. We will keep refining it going forward. One really needs two radios or some very clever math to determine which side of the door one is on.

What we have done for our development version is set it up so it can be in one of three modes. Always on (for passageways) so it consistently locks as you walk up and unlocks as you walk away. Always off (always disabled). Or Manual override.

With the Manual override it still unlocks as you approach and locks again as you depart, but it also allows you to lock the door by hand after you come in and will stay locked until you manually unlock it by hand again or send it a direct command from your phone. This way it doesn't unlock randomly while you're walking up to the door to answer it.

It's our first pass at making this particular feature happen.