I am building a new house and thinking about the front door lock setup. I’m planning to use a ZWave door lock from one of the many larger players, but don’t like always having to change batteries when the lock get’s low power. In some instances, the locking function stops working when it get’s too low. Pain when you’re running out the door, go to lock it, and it just beeps at you to indicate low battery.
I thought about my days working for an organization where we used biometrics, and the door systems that would have special electronic locks instead. I thought this would be great to potentially do, but I wasn’t sure if there was a way to hook this with any specific hardware into a smart system. Keep in mind I’m not trying to pioneer a new area, write custom bindings, or start going crazy picking up arduinos and such to integrate something. I’m mostly looking for a capability that might exist, or if someone has something else similar that has worked to resolve the battery issue for a front door lock.
I’m planing a renovation of a 45 year old house and had the same thoughts like you.
My final plan is:
a) a electronic, wired motorlock (which have different inputs for opening! and autolock feature)
b) ekey Multi fingerprint reader with UDP Bridge
c) reed contact
Explanation:
a) with a wired door you never get locked out with low battery with autolock you can always be shure, that if the door is closed its also locked (very important for your insurance)
With the additional inputs of the lockmotor you can send signals from OH if you like.
b) ekey can directly communicate with the door --> no dependencies to OH, but with the LAN Bridge, OH get informed about the accesses (or tries), which can used in rules (e.g. disableing the alarm)
c) the reed contact informs about the actual state of the door
Of corse, a wired motorlock is a little bit more expensive than an battery powered device, but I think in relation its more than ok.
@michael_sutter do you happen to have some links to some of these pieces you’re using? This sounds extremely interesting. I might not want the auto-lock function on my front door (go to let the dog out and then the door locks, ugh!) but if there is some easy interoperability with interacting from a powered electric lock as you say to OpenHAB - that to me is worth more than a keypad door lock with batteries.
I might have to look at some sort of keypad instead of the fingerprint option though for me. Unfortunately I have a few different folks who are not easily “available” to enroll their fingerprint for access to the house (i.e. housekeeper) - and would like to keep it simple for those folks. But I’m sure those are a dime a dozen to go along with in the same style as the fingerprint readers.
I just unfortunately haven’t had enough time to really dive into it with everything going on for the new house already. But I’m needing to get to it as the electrical walkthrough is coming in the next week or so.
As I mentioned: Its my plan for the renovation. My actual status is “planning”.
The eKey System and the reed contact are nearly fix. The motorlock depends on the new frontdoor.
As long as your dog doesen’t open the door by itself, there is no problem, because the keys are your fingers → You can never forget them.
And with autolock you can never forget to lock… For me it sounds like a win-win Situation.
I agree for ease/convenience factor vs keys. The problem is I’m thinking of the practical application in our scenario. The Mrs won’t really like having to use her fingerprint to open the door when she just wanted to walk the dog around the yard to do his business. And the problem is really about getting remote people enrolled. I know it’s a one time thing, but it’s a little it of a hassle in that regard. So I might have to think about alternate options there.
I’ll have to take a deeper look and see how feasible it is with the builder. He’s the one at the end of the day who’d be installing the door lock portion which really will be the driving factor. Thanks for the input!!
with autolock you can always be shure, that if the door is closed its also locked (very important for your insurance)