
Ask HN: Is There a Door Lock with an API? - oellegaard
We&#x27;re couple of developers who made a company around a year ago and we&#x27;ve now grown to around 8 people and moved into a brand new office.<p>We&#x27;ve been trying to use modern and integrated solutions for everything (e.g. integrating our sonos with alerts as well as the phillips hue) and we really want everything to work together. However, the solutions I could find for door locks is very enterprisy, expensive and non-integratable.<p>Is there a cool (startup?) that makes physical door locks with an API&#x2F;integration, so that we can easily provision new people when they start?
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jason_slack
There is a bonus scene from the movie "The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin", where
they show Mark Karples using a web interface and a micro controller to open a
door. Even shows with a remote too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeJSRboDb2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeJSRboDb2A)

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Tomte
I just remember back when I was visiting/"sightseeing" Shackspace, the hacker
space in Stuttgart, Germany.

They had built a door lock whose bolt was driven by some microcontroller with
a web interface. So they could give out permissions and open the door with
their smartphones (important because very large and diverse set of people who
want to enter – physical keys would have been impractical).

I was really surprised when there was a glitch and some guy couldn't open the
door anymore. The door was bolted, and for a minute or two noone could enter
or leave.

I think that was the most blatant (and scary) violation of just about every
fire code in existence that I've ever experienced first hand.

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barlo
They should've used a door strike meant for such things that they would've
been able to control with their microcontroller, and then still have a normal
knob/lock in place as a failsafe.

A quick google found the sort of setup I'm talking about and a how-to. These
are the types of strikes use on commercial setups.

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Bluetooth-Enabled-
Door-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Bluetooth-Enabled-Door-Lock-
With-Arduino-An/)

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746F7475
It sounds really scary to control front door via API and I don't really see a
way to implement such a thing securely without a lot of work (running ethernet
cable from your front door to air gapped server) and then there is the problem
of how you use it. You can't have mobile app that could unlock your door since
it would need internet/wifi connectivity which automatically just screams "not
secure enough!" to me

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oellegaard
There are already solutions from RUKO (Assa Abloy) which lets you do it with
your phone, but something with a local server and an ethernet cable should be
safe enough IMO. In our case, you still need to de-activate a separate alarm.
It's literally just the replacement of the key and anyone can get a lock pick
kit on amazon.com anyway :-(

~~~
746F7475
But you have to communicate with the server and if you are outside of the door
you can do it either through 3G (Internet) or WiFi.

Which means if users WiFi password is bad anyone can walk in or if your
product isn't 100% solid the server can be attacked and security disabled.

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gpaterno
We have a PoC that works with securepass (or the free form
[https://login.farm](https://login.farm)) that is able to swap username with
the RFID tag id to open a door. We had a sample implementation with a
raspberry PI that electrically open a lock with also OTP using RADIUS (and now
APIs). Unfortunately nobody understood it .... :-(

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remyp
Perhaps August Lock? I've never used it so I know very little, but at first
glance it does seem to have an API of some sort.

~~~
jabzd
I think August Lock would even take the need for an API away, just need to
manage users via existing features. I think it even lets you timebox if you
only want certain employees to have 8 - 5 access vs 24 hour access.

However, it'd be an extra step and not integrated with some central employee
list so the risk of forgetting to remove someone may be too high if using
existing features, so that point may be moot.

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jamesdullaghan
Lockitron has an API and is a great company afaik.

