Unlock your house with a smartphone
Yahoo7 News October 15, 2014, 9:07 am
Technology now provides the opportunity to lock your front door with an internet-connected gadget, but does that mean it is a good idea?
I like the idea of being able to unlock my house automatically as I approach the door, or with only my locked-down, password-protected phone. I especially like the idea of being able to give guests time-limited access to my house, via a smartphone app.
That’s what the latest smart lock does. The August Smart Lock, available now, is a gorgeous piece of hardware that you can install yourself. It lets you lock and unlock your door through a smartphone app, either on demand or automatically, and it lets you send passes to other people who have the app.
You control your August lock with a smartphone app. Its design is clear, and it’s easy to use. You can lock or unlock the door of your house with it, providing that you’re in Bluetooth range of your lock.
The August Lock has the capability of keyless entry into your home. Photo: Yahoo
The August won’t work on custom or unique locks, doors full of extra locks, or anything other than a single deadbolt lock. Unfortunately, on current iPhone 6 models, there’s an issue with the Bluetooth software that can make the phone extremely slow to connect to the lock. It means that locking or unlocking your door requires a long pause while you wait for the app to connect.
Sometimes it just doesn’t. You have to use your old-fashioned key instead. I tried the app on an iPad and an iPhone 5 and did not have that problem, but my daily phone is an iPhone 6. Until Apple updates its Bluetooth software, the August is unusable for me.
The August Lock comes as a self installation kit. Photo: Yahoo
There’s also an Android app. It works with Android 4.4 (KitKat) and requires Bluetooth Smart Ready.
It’s quite easy to send passes to other people (family, house cleaners, delivery people) so they can unlock your door. You can limit their access to certain times, too. However, these guests have to download, install, and set up their own August accounts to use these passes, and the secure sign-up process is tedious (it requires setting a password and getting confirmation codes from your phone and your email).
Your nerdy friends and family might be game for this, but I cannot imagine a service provider going through this process if what he’s accustomed to is using an old-fashioned key.
Digital locks could revolutionalise and normalise keyless entry. Photo: Yahoo
You can set your August lock to enable your door to automatically unlock. The app arms as you approach your house using “geofencing” in your phone, and then unlocks the lock as you walk up to your door and get into Bluetooth range. Once unlocked, the auto-unlock won’t work again until you leave the house (and leave your geofence) and then come home again. This prevents the door from auto-unlocking when you walk around inside your house.
The look can also automatically lock itself after it’s been unlocked for 30 seconds.
The lock itself does not have a WiFi radio, so neither you nor a hacker can tap into the lock from far away and unlock your house. This is good for security. The downside is that the lock cannot report its status to you over the Internet unless someone is using an app to lock or unlock it. If someone jimmies your lock, or unlocks your door from inside the house, the lock can’t alert you.
