
Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day - Jarred
http://blog.lockitron.com/post/32821082973/thank-you-500k-of-reservations-in-one-day
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tzs
I'm concerned about this feature, described on their home page:

> If you use an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, you can enable Lockitron to sense when
> you walk up to the door and unlock for you using Bluetooth 4.0. We call it
> Sense.

Can it sense which side of the door you are on? If I'm coming in from outside,
then having the door unlock as I approach would be useful. If I'm going to the
door from inside, to look through the peephole to see who is pounding on the
door and yelling for me to open it, I would not find it helpful for the door
to unlock itself.

~~~
paulgerhardt
We're experimenting with this feature and really want it to work. We will keep
refining it going forward. One really needs two radios or some very clever
math to determine which side of the door one is on.

What we have done for our development version is set it up so it can be in one
of three modes. Always on (for passageways) so it consistently locks as you
walk up and unlocks as you walk away. Always off (always disabled). Or Manual
override.

With the Manual override it still unlocks as you approach and locks again as
you depart, but it also allows you to lock the door by hand after you come in
and will _stay_ locked until you manually unlock it by hand again or send it a
direct command from your phone. This way it doesn't unlock randomly while
you're walking up to the door to answer it.

It's our first pass at making this particular feature happen.

~~~
jpxxx
You already have another radio: the Geolocation stack in the phone itself. It
can't tell you precisely what side of the door you are on /now/ but it can
certainly be used to infer how long you've been near the house and thus, where
you're likely to be.

So say if I've been GPS "home" for five minutes it assumes 'inside'. Then when
a Bluetooth sense happens next it is extremely likely I'm going outside. Do
not unlock.

Same three minutes without a BT sense pass, it's now nearly certain I'm
"outside" still instead of going in and out. Coarse GPS event happens showing
the phone is moving from the home geofence? DEFINITELY gone. Do unlock when
the next BT sense happens.

Edit: I don't think I'm being clear enough on this telephone keyboard. I feel
that with enough GPS logic and location history you should be able to infer
when the user is likely home and thus disable auto-unlock. This all explodes
when two locks are used, though... Or two authorized users... Or two egress
points... Hrm. This _is_ hard. :)

~~~
paulgerhardt
We gave something like this a shot (and missed). Collecting background GPS
data and transmitting it to a third party service in the background is
currently hard and battery intensive. Highlight does it though!

There are some good ideas in here. Thank you.

~~~
jpxxx
I wish you the best of luck! Your product is one of those things that everyone
will have sooner or later.

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ender7
Lokitron looks great, but you guys have got to fix the UI on the unlock
screen. Every time I see it I have to stare at it for a couple of seconds to
figure out a). what the current state is and b). how to change the current
state.

The swiping action is neat, but there's nothing in the UI to convey that
swiping is what you should do. Also, the paradigm is really screwy -- if the
door is unlocked, I swipe the unlock icon to be on top of the lock icon, which
then transforms the unlock icon into a lock icon, but leaves a new unlock icon
behind in the original place?

I think you would be better served by duplicating Apple's standard toggle
switch UI (you can flip it to be vertical if you want to). You can also add a
progress throbber to the (normally blank) slidable bit if you want to indicate
an "intermediate" state.

~~~
nodata
I wondered that: does an unlock icon show that the door is unlocked, or that I
can unlock it?

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pxlpshr
Awesome! I love the concept and will purchase one after I move from a condo
with an auto-locking door system, which i loathe! :(

From a product design perspective, maybe consider _a rock-solid_ brushed metal
version.. if not purely for asethetic appeal for snobs like me, but also to
project the sense of security and that's something to think about holistically
in your marketing which the website barely touches on. Your device carries a
big burden; peace of mind about my family's security — not the replaceable
materials within it.

I think overall the design looks really good, but something about it feels
Fisher-Price. I know that might seem superficial to some but that was my
immediate reaction.

Congrats on the success!

~~~
crazypyro
I'd like to second this. The product _looks_ very flimsy. (This is to say
nothing about the actual security it provides.) One would think a more
menacing lock that also works really well would also work two-fold as a
preventive measure for would-be thieves.

~~~
codeulike
It lives on the inside of the door, I believe. So would-be thieves can't see
it.

~~~
arbuge
Not the point - it might do even better if it looked sturder to
<i>consumers</i>.

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KirinDave
Cool product. I'm glad it's being well received.

I really hope that this trend we are seeing is the beginning of an explosion
in very high tech home automation and improved appliances in America. We're
fantastically underserved, we're increasingly able to automate manufacturing
of small systems like this, and there is a very popular revival of the small
startup DIY culture going on.

Because you can imagine lots of otherwise unemployed people learning the
basics of programming, microcontrollers, low-voltage digital electronics and
servos, and making a ton of incredibly useful, modular stuff. It's not even
that wild a dream.

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dx4100
I'd be interested in how the devices talk to their servers, and if they have
control to unlock the devices. It would be smart to have public / private
keypairs for each device capable of unlocking, so that even they could
potentially not be allowed to unlock it. I want to see if this service gets
hacked and someone issues a mass-unlock signal.

~~~
paulgerhardt
We'll post an update with more technical details for developers as we approach
launch. Sorry to tease!

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psychotik
Not that I don't believe the fine folks at Lockitron, just a question about
this Kickstarter-on-your-own-site thing that seems to be catching on. Since
this isn't audited by an independent company (like Kickstarter) how do you
blindly believe what the company says? Doing so would be a smart way to build
more buzz, resulting in more success.

PS: The blog is down, so I'm not sure if they presented any visual evidence,
such as an Amazon screenshot. But that's easily doctored too.

~~~
niggler
To be fair, it's not clear to what extent Kickstarter was actually auditing
projects (in light of the various complaints)

~~~
dror
The amounts are published by Kickstarter and they're the ones collecting the
money and passing it to the project, so there's no question that they're
correct. The complaints had to do with the delivery of the product after the
project was funded.

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EGreg
Can you guys clarify what happens when the lockitron's batteries run low, or
the wifi's out, or your server is out?

Can I still use regular keys to get into my house?

If the wifi is out, can I still use bluetooth to get in?

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bhudman
I showed this site to 3 different people and asked them: "How much do you
think the product costs?". They all said $149.

No where does it say on the main page that it actually costs $295. I found
this in the blog at the end of a post: "For $295 and no monthly fees you can
order a Lockitron deadbolt kit that can be installed in about 15 minutes".

The above statement was part of an answer to "What is Lockitron?". I would
have thought that this is the most common FAQ, but it does not exist on the
first page.

Left a sour taste and am disappointed. Though nothing illegal, certainly
deceptive.

~~~
idigit
As stated on the homepage, it costs $150. The $295 in the blog footer I
believe is referring to the old version of Lockitron.

No reason to be disappointed - It clearly states what the new version costs on
the homepage.

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shykes
We had a Lockitron at dotCloud's first San Francisco office. It was great and
very gratifying in a "programming the real world" way. Keep it up!

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binarycrusader
Has anyone done a thorough security review of the lockitron hardware, etc.?
While I know physical locks aren't that secure, people that couldn't get in
easily with a physical lock might be able to trivially get in with an
electronic one.

I wonder if there's been any consideration to tying this in with Google's two-
factor-style authentication system?

~~~
wyck
I agree with the hardware review, my major concern is not the cool digital
part but the actual bits and pieces because locks break all the time, and this
is essentially adding another layer that can break.

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timbre
Do you keep logs? The idea that you've got a record of every time I've entered
or left my house creeps me out enough that I wouldn't use this as a customer.
On the other hand, if I were _building_ this, I'd be pretty interested in what
I might be able to do with this data.

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milesskorpen
Great that the pre-orders have been such a success ... but still, that's
~3-3.5k units. Is that a lot of sales for this kind of product? It sounds low,
but I might just be benchmarking off of the digital goods numbers I'm used to
hearing.

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robomartin
A non-Kickstarter Kickstarter?

~~~
paulgerhardt
We don't take the money up front. We're authorizing cards as a minimal low
pass filter. Primarily we need to know how many to make (or if anyone wanted
one at all!)

~~~
bduerst
FYI I downloaded your app a couple months ago with the hopes I could use it to
replicate my NFC card for my building, but I hit your login-only screen.

Can you make an a "Lockitron Labs" app or something similar that allows you to
read third party NFC keys and replicate their signal on demand?

~~~
mpclark
Actual NFC keys (as implemented on NFC phones) don't work like this -- they
are much more secure (think of an exchange of freshly calculated encrypted
information rather than broadcasting an unchanging code) and can't be copied.

~~~
bduerst
Wouldn't it be possible to reverse engineer then? If you ping it with several
different signals, you can interpret the responses and analyze the encryption
- right?

~~~
mpclark
I guess that is theoretically possible, insofar as _anything_ can be reverse
engineered.

It's probably easier to kick down the door, though.

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mcdowall
Such a great product, this solves a massive problem I have when away and using
Airbnb for my flat and having to get my poor mum to have to come round to let
them in each time so will definitely be ordering one.

p.s as its often difficult to ask on Kickstarter, but out of curiosity, what
tools / hardware did you use to create the video, its pretty neat.

~~~
paulgerhardt
We borrowed a (very generous, awesome) friend's Cannon DSLR. And another (very
generous, awesome) friends Zoom H4N and Røde Shotgun mic for sound.

Rough cuts were made using iMovie (super low tech but very quick) and once we
settled on an approach that was 'working' we polished it up in After Effects.

Most of the trick to "good enough" photography or filming is good lighting.
For this we borrowed some other (very generous, awesome) friends' lights. For
outdoor shots were we couldn't use artificial lights; we waited till the Magic
Hour (dusk). We got a door frame from Home Depot and drove it up to the top of
Skyline to get one of the shots with the scenic overview.

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spo81rty
Why not just dead bolts with a keypad? I have locks that do that and can be
controlled from my phone as well. Sometimes we over engineer things.
<http://www.kwikset.com/SmartSecurity/Electronic-Locks.aspx>

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nico
Wow, congratulations to Lockitron!!

I stayed with the founders 2 years ago in Palo Alto after Startup School. I
remember they opened the door remotely for me when I arrived and there was
nobody home, it was amazing.

I had lost track of them until now, I'm really glad to see all the interest
and support they are getting.

~~~
ccamrobertson
Thank you Nico, it was great to host you. Airbnb'ing with Lockitron was
incredibly straightforward.

~~~
nico
Thank you for hosting me. Even though briefly, I really enjoyed my stay with
you. Congratulations for your hard work and persistance, I hope you guys do
great!

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artpop
_sigh_ Another non-standards-based IoT device for the short sighted and
excitable Kickstarter crowd. An equivalent to the level of interoperability
that the web introduced is coming to the IoT space. These proprietary things
are and most certainly will become junk.

~~~
paulgerhardt
TCP/IP/BT4

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brianbreslin
I'd like to see an option for when i don't have my phone on me (keypad).

~~~
coopdog
I kind of like that it has no external surface. I'd even consider removing the
keyhole if it worked well and just having a perfectly smooth door. (would have
to auto close the door and have a deadbolt snib thing)

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georgeott
Question: What if the resident just leaves the door open? Can the system tell
if the door has been left open? (The lock will still lock and unlock)

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exolab
Nice product, nice website, nice video. But I wager not many people want to
see chest hair in a commercial video.

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workhorse
Kudos on the video. I was 50/50 on whether I wanted to buy one, but after the
video I had to have one!

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francov88
Pretty crazy post! Congrats to the team for launching and making a big splash.

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cmwelsh
What theme are you using on Tumblr? It's very simple and clean. I like it.

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joshmangel
Just bought one for our office. Absolutely love it :) Keep it up guys!

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rahulvohra
Congrats guys. I miss our Lockitron :)

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savrajsingh
Yeah!!

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cwe
Bombed. Cached anywhere?

~~~
idigit
working here fine.

