Smart Locks & Smart devices

Off late a slew of "SMART" devices, which are so much more affordable, have become popular. There was a time when smart home products were exclusive to the rich and mighty but boy! have the times changed.

With products ranging from connected appliances, lights and connected locks. Some of these are smart products, while some are just connected and are wannabe smart devices. A smart product must solve a problem and or make an existing task easier or at least make it more fun, for example, a sonoff smart switch makes my life much easier by letting me set up my lights to turn on automatically at 6 AM gently waking me up, but if that smart switch was only a connected light and I had to take out my mobile phone to turn the light on or off that is merely a connected light, not a smart light.

Similarly, smart locks have been around for a while since 1975, when a rudimentary smart lock that could open buy a recordable plastic card was launched by Tor Sørnes by the name VingCard. slowly and steadily the products were modified converting the security mechanism to electronic. Initially, access was granted based on a plastic card with a specific pattern of holes, then came the magnetic strip, eventually passive RFID cards took over in most commercial settings since they are completely contactless and have longer lives than magnetic strips. However, in most personal settings such as homes, a completely different mechanism of access is more suitable, considering that fewer people will use the lock, access is granted on basis of a numeric keypad / or fingerprints and in certain high tech application by IRIS patterns.

Smart locks are really smart, they make life much easier by eliminating the need to carry big ugly keys that keep jangling in your trousers and scratch your mobiles and also amping up the security by using passcodes that are 15 digits or by just using your fingerprints which are nearly impossible to copy. most of these locks don't have keys which makes lost keys a thing of the past.

With homes becoming smarter the locks that protect them too must become smarter too. Isn't it the first element of a home that a homeowner or a guest interacts with?