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Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

lockitron.com

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Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#141

Post by polshaw »

arkonaut wrote: post #82
polshaw wrote: post #57

> We won’t charge your card until your Lockitron is ready Interesting.. so you don't even need the money for the first production run, pure crowd-hype marketing. Also very ballsy of YC to sidestep kickstarter like this.. although i suppose 1000 pre-sales isn't huge. As for the product, some nice feature improvements over v1.0, although i'm not a fan of the new plasticy design-- i would not want to see that thing on m…

i think this is quite smart. it's not just the hype, but similar to app.net, it's guaranteeing there is a minimum threshold of demand. what do you mean by 'ballsy to sidestep kickstarter.' has kickstarter become some kind of sole-arbiter of product development? FWIW, if this style of e-commerce continues, someone should develop the API for this/app.net type of sales instead of each building the billing system from sc…

Kickstarter is definitely the existing sole-arbiter of crowd sourcing funding. They have brought massive crowds to YC companies so i think it is a significant move to walk away from that to save 5%.

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#142

Post by [deleted] »

arkonaut wrote: post #82
polshaw wrote: post #57

> We won’t charge your card until your Lockitron is ready Interesting.. so you don't even need the money for the first production run, pure crowd-hype marketing. Also very ballsy of YC to sidestep kickstarter like this.. although i suppose 1000 pre-sales isn't huge. As for the product, some nice feature improvements over v1.0, although i'm not a fan of the new plasticy design-- i would not want to see that thing on m…

i think this is quite smart. it's not just the hype, but similar to app.net, it's guaranteeing there is a minimum threshold of demand. what do you mean by 'ballsy to sidestep kickstarter.' has kickstarter become some kind of sole-arbiter of product development? FWIW, if this style of e-commerce continues, someone should develop the API for this/app.net type of sales instead of each building the billing system from sc…

[deleted]

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#143

Post by urza »

pg wrote: post #10

We 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.

My problem with solution like this is the centralization. I dont want to give power over my door to any one commercial entity. I am sure people behind this project are all nice and likable. And it looks like really neat solution feature-wise. But I dont like the principle. Centralization is never good. You dont know the future of the companny, but your doors depend on it to certain degree. Plus it is a single point of failure and added security risk.

But then again, I dont use facebook, dropbox or gmail for the same reason. (Instead I use selfhosted solutions.) So I am an unimportant minority. Its a pity that the trend with new solutions is towards use of centralization instead of decetralization, which gave us Internet, email and even parlament democracy. As I sad before, if email were to be invented today it would be single company's project backed by YC that would rule us all.

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#144

Post by TeMPOraL »

trotsky wrote: post #21

relies on your phone working 2.4 Ghz your internet connection your power their datacenter their website software to avoid carrying a key? anyone in the area could easily ddos off your wireless more or less permanently by spamming disconnect. doesn't seem like a very good risk/reward ratio to me. whats the problem with a more traditional (read local) keyless approach? door too thick?

> relies on

> (...)

> their datacenter

> their website software

This is a thing I find increasingly bewildering/disturbing about new hacks like that. Why do we route signals around the whole world to communicate two devices that are few meters apart? Also, having to go through third party's computer infrastructure sounds like a huge waste of resources. Bluetooth, NFC or WLANs are the tools we should be using.

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#145

Post by philwebster »

I made this point in another comment, but here it is again:

This product can be about much more than solving the problem of forgetting your keys. People with limited dexterity (such as my father, a quadriplegic) would love a product like this. When leaving the house, he would be able to make a few taps on an iPad to lock things up. Right now we don't use a lock because it's behind a garage door, but this would allow us much more flexibility.

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#146

Post by pmr_ »

urza wrote: post #143
pg wrote: post #10

We 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.

My problem with solution like this is the centralization. I dont want to give power over my door to any one commercial entity. I am sure people behind this project are all nice and likable. And it looks like really neat solution feature-wise. But I dont like the principle. Centralization is never good. You dont know the future of the companny, but your doors depend on it to certain degree. Plus it is a single point o…

I have been thinking about how to move self-hosted solutions more into the mainstream. Nearly every company already has some form of hosting that can be utilized for this. Every household has a router that can serve as a miniature data center. The problem seems to be the heavy maintenance but I don't see how this cannot be proliferated the same way it has been done for applications on mobile platforms.

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#147

Post by [deleted] »

rogerbinns wrote: post #140
mdip wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are only 24 possible combinations of a 4 digit code anyway (assuming 4 different digits). I doubt the devices do a lockout on the wrong code, so it wouldn't take that long to hack.

[deleted]

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#148

Post by trotsky »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #73
trotsky wrote: post #21

relies on your phone working 2.4 Ghz your internet connection your power their datacenter their website software to avoid carrying a key? anyone in the area could easily ddos off your wireless more or less permanently by spamming disconnect. doesn't seem like a very good risk/reward ratio to me. whats the problem with a more traditional (read local) keyless approach? door too thick?

With the Bluetooth 4 radio it only relies on a Bluetooth 4 enabled device (like your phone) and the door lock itself.

yeah, I missed that the first time around and that definitely nullifies pretty much all of my issues - i had a visceral reaction when i read phone...website...lock... and managed to bring up a bunch of non-issues

Re: Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone

#150

Post by izak30 »

urza wrote: post #143
pg wrote: post #10

We 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.

My problem with solution like this is the centralization. I dont want to give power over my door to any one commercial entity. I am sure people behind this project are all nice and likable. And it looks like really neat solution feature-wise. But I dont like the principle. Centralization is never good. You dont know the future of the companny, but your doors depend on it to certain degree. Plus it is a single point o…

Did you build your current lock by hand? Did you at least disassemble it and figure out that there isn't a master key that would grant entry? How far do you take this?

Maybe having your locks NAT out or phone home to a third party is a bit much for a lot of people, as it opens new vectors, but you know, bricks and windows and such.

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