I’m considering installing smart locks on my house’s exterior doors. I’m currently looking at the Lockin Veno Solar Face or the Lockly Visage Zeno.
My lifestyle is to always have the doors locked, and we unlock them when we go in or out, and then we re-lock the door behind us.
It seems that smart locks only “smart unlock” the door from the outside, and from the inside you must manually unlock it. I find that annoying and of such an insignificant increase in convenience over my current manual locks that is not worth it.
I suspect that locks that support ultra wide bandwidth (sense the presence of your phone/watch) would unlock from the inside a well as the outside, but I don’t want UWB.
Does anyone have experience with smart locks? Do any of them automate unlocking from inside as well as outside?
I have a Tapo (TP-Link) lock, and I can sorta do it a few ways.
I think the issue with what you are wanting (approaching the door and it unlocking for you / geofencing) is that when you are home, your devices’ presence could or would be triggering it often throughout the day. It would either be annoying, constantly killing the battery in the lock, or worst case scenario, you go to check on a sound and approach the door, coincidentally unlocking it for an intruder.
What I can do with my lock is just manually unlock, set a time trigger to lock/unlock, tap a button in the app (which you may be able to put on your home screen?) or I can tell my smart speaker to unlock the door. There’s probably a few other options in forgetting. The main reason I have it is to let us know when the door doesn’t close all the way, to give a handsfree way to unlock when carrying stuff, and I have a trigger where if it’s between sunset and sunrise, it will turn on the indoor light for a set time after the door unlocks so you don’t stumble in blind.
Good point. Open-from-inside using facial recognition would cut down on false positives. But I can see how it could be important to not have any situations where your door is unlocked when you don’t want it to be.
It’d be twice as costly with readers on both sides, and the bulk on the inside of my unit is mostly the battery, so you’d either have a much bulkier interior unit or a smaller battery, and if you’re close enough for face/NFC/whatever reader that wouldn’t false positive, you’re likely close enough to just unlock manually.
I was thinking maybe a downward projecting motion sensor so it could see you approach would be small and read an small enough area, but the first time a pet goes to the door, you’re unlocked unintentionally again! 😸