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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, presu
by pg 14y ago
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.
- larrys 14y ago"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 spare key.
- jevinskie 14y agoBut the lockbox has been working just fine for hundreds of years and isn't technological enough!
- majormajor 14y agoExcept 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 forcing me to always have my keys. So while I love the convenience this idea provides for shared access to places, and for frictionless don't-even-have-to-get-out-my-keys access, locking oneself out is a solved problem in my book. (Sure, I could lose my keys, but I could also lose my phone—and the redundancy here is another nice and fun thing provided by this system.) (This habit was largely inspired by getting a car which refused to let me lock myself out: if I pushed the lock button down on the driver's door while the door was open, and then shut the door, it unlocked itself. Previously I'd had one where you held the handle out to override this behavior, but this one insisted on being locked from the outside. And then I noticed that this was keeping my from locking myself out like I had a few times with the old one.)
- anonymouz 14y agoThe 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.
- cwe 14y agoSince all the YC partners are using boosted boards to longboard to the office, I bet this comes in handy. I know I wouldn't want a giant key chain in my pocket while riding.
- rdl 14y agoYeah, 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.
- tomsaffell 14y agoTotally agreed on the pocket layout - don't know what i'd do without my cargo pants/shorts - must be an engineer thing... http://xkcd.com/806/ http://xkcd.com/806/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 14y agoI occasionally spend a few minutes looking for something that I have placed in the wrong pocket.
- samstave 14y agoI have panicked several times after I put my MIFI device in my pants pocket instead of its specific pocket in my backpack. And the same when I place my wallet in my front pocket instead of the back after a transaction.
- rdl 14y agoYeah -- I was even more OCD with my tactical vest, pants, etc. Basically every square inch of MOLLE had a purpose, and needed to work when standing or when prone on the floor (during incoming), etc. And you do weird things like put a first aid kit with standard layout in a standard location (to be used on YOU if injured), and I had my real medical kit in a different position (which I'd use on anyone else, or on myself). My car's trunk is similarly organized with a trauma bag, fire extinguisher, crowbar, etc.
- samstave 14y agoI bike to work and my wife is a stay at home mom. I pretty much never carry keys on me. I ALWAYS have my phone though. Quite frankly, I look forward to the day when my phone replaces my access badge/key-card at work. Of course there is the arguement "but someone could take your phone and access the MDF!" -- well they can always steal my access badge as well. I have forgotten my badge countless times in my career though I have forgotten my phone all of once.
- stephengillie 14y agoIf your phone is iPhone-ish in size, you may try what I did. After getting a stiff-rubberized phone case (you stretch it around the phone), tape the cards to the case. If you cut a notch in an old card, you can have that be the card against the tape -- the rest of the cards can slide in and out against that card or the phone, and are held in by the force of the tape. I call it the PhoneWallet. I made one for my droid Incredible.
- 11185d 14y agocomments like this are a waste of everyone's time
- stephengillie 14y agoI'm really interested in seeing a car lock like Lockitron. "Empirically people are a lot less likely to forget their phone than to forget keys..." Especially with the PhoneWallet. I have my keycard, ID, and ORCA all conveniently on the back of my phone. The same tap gets me into work and pays bus fares. If I didn't have to carry a car key, I would just carry that 1 item.
- rtkwe 14y agoSome cars already have that built in. It's a per manufacturer thing though.
- stephengillie 14y agoI've seen Lexuses (Lexii?) with the keyless device that unlocks with proximity. Maybe a bluetooth pairing that unlocks when your phone is near? All I'm looking for is one less item to carry, one less object in my life.
- 001sky 14y agoI've seen and used these as well. They are OK, but you need to still remember to bring the key-fob. Because it does not come out of the pocket/purse nearly as much, makes it (oddly) somewhat of a PITA to keep an eye on. Example: I read one time of a guy having this on his (Ducati?) Moto and after filling up at the petrol, drove back into his hometown to the Local pub. Later, Bike no longer works, has to have the tow truck come to take him home. What happened? He left the fob on top of the petrol dispenser. He was close enough to start and take off, but as he left, he "lost" the key. But never noticed, as bike worked fine (and it was not visible normally unlike a regular key, etc). Ergo, him stranded. Expensive mistake. Moral of the story is if you don't use it, you lose it. =]
- flamingbuffalo 14y agoI think all the new Dodge models (even base trim) have keyless these days as well. Hopefully it it catches on for all makes, it's a pretty nice feature.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoI'm interested how you are using the product since it does not seem to be available to the public yet.
- wallawe 14y agoIt's a ycombinator backed company: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/lockitron-lets-you-unlock-your-door-with-your-phone/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/lockitron-lets-you-unlock-y...
- atlbeer 14y agoWell, I was interested as to why Lockitron had a pre-order page up as I own one as well. It's differently (visually) than the version that is on the website now but, it's certainly a Lockitron lock which I purchased almost a year ago. Looks like they are rebooting their company with a new model and fundraising via Kickstarter.
- klochner 14y agoNot quite - looks more like they're just launching a new product and taking pre-orders, no fundraising or rebooting.
- jjb123 14y agoThey mention that they must sell 1,000 for them to go into production (near the bottom).
- paulgerhardt 14y agoThis is a pre-order page for the second iteration of Lockitron. The new version comes with two-way communication, Bluetooth 4 for offline access, and a host of other features. We're not taking money for pre-orders; we're establishing how many to make.
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- htmltablesrules 14y agoEmpirically? Where is the research?
- Groxx 14y agoDouble-check the definition of "empirical", it doesn't mean "based on The Scientific Method": >based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic
- akent 14y ago"Empirically" still implies more formality than the purely anecdotal evidence presented here, unless there's more to it that pg is not sharing with us.
- urza 14y agoMy 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.
- pmr_ 14y agoI 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.
- izak30 14y agoDid 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.
- run4yourlives 14y agoCome on, there are probably hundreds of locksmiths in your city right now that could gain access to your front door in a matter of seconds. Given the portability of the device, it's doubtful that lockitron even knows what it's unlocking at any given time.
- samstave 14y ago