5 ms·

Lockitron locked me out of my apartment. Danalock jammed in the middle of unlocking and made it very difficult to get inside. You know what works 24x7? My car's

Lockitron locked me out of my apartment. Danalock jammed in the middle of unlocking and made it very difficult to get inside. You know what works 24x7? My car's door. Why is this so hard?

busterarm 9y ago
Where are we going to put a car battery and the means to charge it in your door frame? Are you going to operate a crank to recharge the battery? I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle.
- PhantomGremlin 9y ago
  I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle. This is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer
  - busterarm 9y ago
    They can fail though (and I've seen it happen, overload, excessive moisture, etc.,). How do you know this before you touch the doorknob and get the (possibly final) zap of your life? If the failure mode is potentially "you die", then we're probably better off low tech.
- post_break 9y ago
  I would just run constant power to my door if it means I get to walk up to it and it unlocks.
s0rce 9y ago
My car door is currently broken, the lock somehow got pushed into the door and the keyless entry broken years ago. Luckily, its only the passenger door so I just unlock it from inside but if it was the driver door I'd have to take the door apart to fix it.
detaro 9y ago
I guess part of it is that these are all after-the-fact upgrades with limited integration into the lock/door. Electronic locks in commercial buildings etc. seem to work just fine, but they are not an easy "order of Amazon and install in <1h" setup.
jasonlaramburu 9y ago
Can you open your car's door with an app?
ccamrobertson 9y ago
Sorry, that sucks. There were painful lessons from crowdfunded Lockitron which is why we stopped shipping it at the end of 2014. We had a similar debacle in early 2014 with automated updates. The crowdfunded Lockitron used a gear train that required it to back turn in order to unload the mechanism such that a user could turn the lock manually. A hastily deployed update with insufficient QA would overturn the gear train past the limit of the underlying lock mechanism. At this point the stress would be released in one of three ways; (1) the main worm gear would pop off from the motor shaft, (2) a secondary gear would lose some teeth or, in a few rare cases, (3) the underlying lock would be damaged. We luckily had enough units to quickly ship replacements and rolled up an update that reversed the changes. As a result, we made an explicit decision not to implement remote OTA firmware update capability for Lockitron Bolt. Instead we require users to be within Bluetooth range of the door so they can immediately verify the device is working as expected after an update. Given we don't want to nag users on a regular basis to update their lock, we opt for very conservative release cycles. Additionally Lockitron Bolt uses a vastly simplified clutch mechanism that doesn't require any back turn behavior. This means you can always turn the lock manually (by hand or key), even if the device is dead.

Lockitron locked me out of my apartment. Danalock jammed in the middle of unlocking and made it very difficult to get inside. You know what works 24x7? My car's door. Why is this so hard?

busterarm 9y ago

Where are we going to put a car battery and the means to charge it in your door frame? Are you going to operate a crank to recharge the battery? I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle.

PhantomGremlin 9y ago
I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle. This is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer
- busterarm 9y ago
  They can fail though (and I've seen it happen, overload, excessive moisture, etc.,). How do you know this before you touch the doorknob and get the (possibly final) zap of your life? If the failure mode is potentially "you die", then we're probably better off low tech.
post_break 9y ago
I would just run constant power to my door if it means I get to walk up to it and it unlocks.

s0rce 9y ago

My car door is currently broken, the lock somehow got pushed into the door and the keyless entry broken years ago. Luckily, its only the passenger door so I just unlock it from inside but if it was the driver door I'd have to take the door apart to fix it.

detaro 9y ago

I guess part of it is that these are all after-the-fact upgrades with limited integration into the lock/door. Electronic locks in commercial buildings etc. seem to work just fine, but they are not an easy "order of Amazon and install in <1h" setup.

jasonlaramburu 9y ago

Can you open your car's door with an app?

ccamrobertson 9y ago

Sorry, that sucks. There were painful lessons from crowdfunded Lockitron which is why we stopped shipping it at the end of 2014. We had a similar debacle in early 2014 with automated updates. The crowdfunded Lockitron used a gear train that required it to back turn in order to unload the mechanism such that a user could turn the lock manually. A hastily deployed update with insufficient QA would overturn the gear train past the limit of the underlying lock mechanism. At this point the stress would be released in one of three ways; (1) the main worm gear would pop off from the motor shaft, (2) a secondary gear would lose some teeth or, in a few rare cases, (3) the underlying lock would be damaged. We luckily had enough units to quickly ship replacements and rolled up an update that reversed the changes. As a result, we made an explicit decision not to implement remote OTA firmware update capability for Lockitron Bolt. Instead we require users to be within Bluetooth range of the door so they can immediately verify the device is working as expected after an update. Given we don't want to nag users on a regular basis to update their lock, we opt for very conservative release cycles. Additionally Lockitron Bolt uses a vastly simplified clutch mechanism that doesn't require any back turn behavior. This means you can always turn the lock manually (by hand or key), even if the device is dead.