Can't use my Nest lock to let guests into my house. I'm pretty sure their infrastructure is hosted in Google Cloud. So yeah... definitely some stuff lost.
You have my honest sympathy because of the difficulties you now suffer through, but it bears emphasizing: this is what you get when you replace what should be a physical product under your control with Internet-connected service running on third-party servers. IoT as seen on the consumer market is a Bad Idea.
I am pretty sure there are smart locks that don't rely on an active connection to the cloud. The lock downloads keys when it has a connection and a smartphone can download keys. This means they work even if no active internet connection at the time the person tries to open. If the connection was dead the entire time between creating the new key and the person trying to use the lock it still wouldn't work.
If there are not locks that work this way it sure seems like there should be. Using cloud services to enable cool features is great. But if those services are not designed from the beginning with fallback for when the internet/cloud isn't live that is something that is a weakness that often is unwise to leave in place imo.
FWIW - The Nest lock in question doesn't rely on an active internet connection to work. If it can't connect, it can still be unlocked using the sets of PINs you can setup for individual users (including setting start/end times and time of day that the codes are active). There's even a set of 9V battery terminals at the bottom in case you forget to change the batteries that power the lock.
This does mean you need to setup a code in advance of people showing up, but it's an under 30 second setup that I've found simpler than unlocking once someone shows up. The cameras dropping offline are a hot mess though, since those have no local storage option.
It may not be worth the complexity to give users the choice. If I were to issue keys to guests this way I would want my revocations to be immediately effective no matter what. Guest keys requiring a working network is a fine trade-off.
You can have this without user intervention - have the lock download an expiration time with the list of allowed guest keys, or have the guest keys public-key signed with metadata like expiration time.
If the cloud is down, revocations aren't going to happen instantly anyway. (Although you might be able to hack up a local WiFi or Bluetooth fallback.)
It's a fake trade-off, because you're choosing between lo-tech solution and bad engineering. IoT would work better if you made the "I" part stand for "Intranet", and kept the whole thing a product instead of a service. Alas, this wouldn't support user exploitation.
Yeah, my dream device would be some standard app architecture that could run on consumer routers. You buy the router and it's your family file and print server, and also is the public portal to manage your IoT devices like cameras, locks, thermostats, and lights.
I don't use the features, but I know my Qnap keeps touting IoT so they might be worth checking out as well.
It's also my Plex media server, file server, VPN, I run some containers on there. I used to use it as a print server but my new printer is wireless so I never bothered
Don't be ridiculous. Real alternatives would include P2P between your smart lock and your phone app or a locally hosted hub device which controls all home automation/IoT, instead of a cloud. If the Internet can still route a "unlock" message from your phone to your lock, why do you require a cloud for it to work?
Or use one of the boxes with combination lock that you can screw onto your wall for holding a physical key. Some are even recommended by insurance companies.
Any key commands they have already set up will still work. Nest is pretty good at having network failures fail to a working state.
They might not be able to actively open the lock over the network is the only change.
Sure you can, but you'll need to give them your code or the master code. Unless you've enabled Privacy Mode, in which case... I don't know if even the master code would work.
Everyone talking about security and not replacing locks with smart locks seems to forget that you can just kick the fucking door down or jimmy a window open.
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