We're using lockitron at the apartments we stay in San Francisco. It works like a charm. Thinking about getting one for back home :)
Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
101–110 of 222 posts
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys," That also varies on whether you drive a car or take public transportation. If you drive, leaving your house requires taking your keys and it becomes a habit. Same with leaving work. If you drove there you need your keys to leave. A good way around forgetting keys also is a realtor style lockbox either on the door or hidden with a sp…
Except for a year in a dorm where I couldn't disable my dorm room door's automatically-lock-when-shut behavior, I've developed a simple habit that's kept me from ever locking myself out of my car or home since: never lock the place/vehicle from the inside, or let it lock itself. I can't lock the deadbolt on my apartment when I leave without the key. And I can't lock my car from outside without the key. It's a way of…
The automatically-lock-when-shut behavior of doors is an extremely weak protection anyway, so one should always lock the door with a key anyway (this at least prevents the most trivial circumvention, i.e., open the door with a plastic card).
Interestingly I seem to use more or less the converse of your method, also with great success: Always lock the apartment door from the inside. Whenever I leave the apartment, I therefore am forced to take the keys.
I suppose the most important thing is to be consistent with ones behavior, so that a subconscious habit can develop.
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#103Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#104Why not use a lock with a keycode instead? I don't see a single scenario where Lockitron works better. http://consumer.schlage.com/Products/Pages/category-landing....
The keycodes are pretty easy to guess. Regular users will only ever enter the correct codes so if you look carefully at the keypad you can see which digits have been pressed. Most likely there will only be 4 of the 10 possible digits used. I've actually encountered keypads where the order didn't actually matter so you could get in in seconds.
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#105Was this a YC company?
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#106We use Lockitron at the 500startups offices. It worked well most of the time. The few times it didn't work was very annoying and I had to rely on someone else to open the door for me (from the inside). As long as you have a secondary option for opening the door, it's a great product.
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#107Cool and interesting idea, but for obvious reasons* I have some slight reluctance with using a service like this for my home. For less valuable targets though -- like a conference room or shared workspace -- this is a really clever solution to sharing keys. *I hate it when people say that so I'll expand. Simply put, I'm worried about it getting hacked. For instance, could you gain access to someone's wifi and then fl…
Sadly, the lock on your front door is most likely so easy to break, a thief wouldn't waste time trying to hack anything but the keyhole. I learned how to make and use a bump key from YouTube, practiced on my own front door and after a couple of hours could consistently spring the lock with a few whacks (seconds).
The weaker component is the (still available as a backup entry method) keyhole. A year ago, my neighbor locked herself out. I found out that she also had a Schlage lock and figured I'd try to help. After finding my disused bump key, I had sprung her lock after about twenty whacks. My total experience was two hours of practice three years ago. I don't consider myself to be uniquely skilled here.
Personally, I'd prefer a mechanism that would allow me to eliminate the key entirely. I'd rather live with the risk of battery drain/malfunction/phone loss.
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#108We use Lockitron at the 500startups offices. It worked well most of the time. The few times it didn't work was very annoying and I had to rely on someone else to open the door for me (from the inside). As long as you have a secondary option for opening the door, it's a great product.
" As long as you have a secondary option for opening the door, it's a great product."
I can't tell if that is sarcasm?
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#109Why not use a lock with a keycode instead? I don't see a single scenario where Lockitron works better. http://consumer.schlage.com/Products/Pages/category-landing....
The keycodes are pretty easy to guess. Regular users will only ever enter the correct codes so if you look carefully at the keypad you can see which digits have been pressed. Most likely there will only be 4 of the 10 possible digits used. I've actually encountered keypads where the order didn't actually matter so you could get in in seconds.
Combine that with the assumption that the average consumer probably used a date of some significance for their 4-digit code and in the US you can guess that 0 or 1 was first, 0, 1, 2 or 3 was the third position, leaving you only to guess the second and fourth position.
Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
#110We use Lockitron on our offices and it has saved us a lot of trouble. Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys, presumably because you use your phone for so many other things whereas most keys do nothing but get you into a single building.
"Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys," That also varies on whether you drive a car or take public transportation. If you drive, leaving your house requires taking your keys and it becomes a habit. Same with leaving work. If you drove there you need your keys to leave. A good way around forgetting keys also is a realtor style lockbox either on the door or hidden with a sp…
Yeah, I forget my phone way more than I forget keys, because I need the keys to open (NFC/HID) the door to the garage and to use the car. I use a deadbolt so I can't lock myself out of the apartment, but also can't go into the garage without keys, and I ~never go out the front door. I end up leaving my phone docked in my car about 10% of the time by accident, though.
The key (heh) to not forgetting anything, though, is to have a consistent set of pockets for things -- I always keep keys+knife, flashlight, wallet+cash, iphone in specific pockets. The only times I get screwed up is when I wear clothing without the right layout of pockets.