Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

http://blog.lockitron.com/post/32821082973/thank-you-500k-of-reservations-in-one-day

by Jarred • 14 years ago

121 86 14 years ago

blog.lockitron.com

cwe• 14 years ago

Bombed. Cached anywhere?

idigit2• 14 years ago

working here fine.

tzs• 14 years ago

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.

dx41002• 14 years ago

It probably has a proximity timeout -- if you're out of range for more than x number of minutes, it will consider you 'gone'. It may not be passive, and may send you a request via Bluetooth for unlock. I imagine they have this worked out well enough to advertise it :)

lotyrin• 14 years ago

Then (as is the answer to many of the security concerns people have with Lockitron) just don't enable that feature.

Also, anyone that's seriously worried about the security of this device should be mostly concerned that the standard keyhole still exists on the other side of the door because they're trivial to bump or pick.

lotso• 14 years ago

To play devil's advocate, it is less conspicuous to open a door that you can hack open with your phone than it is to pick or bump it (Although depending on your skill, picking it may be a very easy thing too).

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

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.

alasano• 14 years ago

"Always on (for passageways) so it consistently locks as you walk up and unlocks as you walk away."

I don't want my door toying with me like this.

WalterSear• 14 years ago

If you know where I am every few minutes, you can tell whether I am likely to be coming or going.

atlbeer• 14 years ago

I started to write my own version of this a while back but, it relied on some "server-side" work.

I had a daemon running inside my house which looked for my iPhone on the internal WiFi network. When my phone went off-line it signaled that I had "left" and after a certain duration went into "watch-to-unlock" mode. When my phone reappeared on my network I would signal to unlock.

I know you are probably trying to keep as much of the logic off the perimeter of your ecosystem (Phone App and in-home hardware) but, it was the best way I could figure it out.

caublestone• 14 years ago

You should be able to figure out if the signal is coming from inside vs. outside based on signal attenuation. Systems are being developed to pinpoint user location indoors based on this technique. Fortunately, your use case is more binary: Is the bluetooth signal passing through a door. Any dBm above a certain number would just be assumed indoors.

Great stuff and good luck!

ghostfish• 14 years ago

Have you considered a patch antenna or something similarly directional right on the PCB? Still only one radio and reasonably robust direction detection as far as "is the signal coming from in front of me or behind me" is concerned.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

This could be an added incentive for customers to purchase your hardware for both their front and back doors. Then they've got two radios.

In two-door installations, it may be possible to look at the signal strength as received at the back door to tell when the user is inside the house. That could get you out of the time-of-arrival calculation business.

Another possibility is a small, cheap IR sensor. If there's a person inside the house within ~10 feet of the door, it doesn't unlock automatically. The basic idea would be similar to the sensors on toilets and urinals in public restrooms.

In any case I'm glad to hear that my Tom Swift amulet is finally being made. Next up, the Triphibian Atomicar!

matthew-wegner• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, I have some home automation setup that checks for my iPhone's presence on wifi (my phone gets on wifi every ~10 minutes on battery, and holds a connection when plugged in). I preordered a Lockitron, and plan to use the API in my "welcome home" script trigger to unlock the door.

I'm not sure how easily you could implement this sort of detection on Lockitron's end, though. I use a static DHCP lease on my router and simply ping the phone.

Just thinking out loud here! Wifi presence seems super useful from my limited experience, and I'm not sure why more tech things aren't using it.

EGreg2• 14 years ago

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.

Don't you mean the other way?

jpxxx2• 14 years ago

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. :)

sksksk• 14 years ago

Maybe a cool feature would be if it didn't unlock automatically, but put it in "unlockable" mode, and would unlock when you knocked on it. You would still have the convenience of unlocking automatically (if your hands are full, use your knee or something), and it wouldn't unlock when you're in the house

robomartin2• 14 years ago

A non-Kickstarter Kickstarter?

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

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!)

bduerst2• 14 years ago

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?

grinich• 14 years ago

Why did you decide to run your own presale rather than go through Kickstarter?

robomartin2• 14 years ago

I should have added a smiley face or a little more text.

The question was actually intended a bit differently than I realize you (and others) may have interpreted.

It is VERY clear from your site that you are NOT charging anyone until you ship the product they are buying. Hence the "non-Kickstarter Kickstarter" comment. In other words, you are not doing anything like Kickstarter at all yet you are gathering commitments and gauging interest.

I shouldn't have left it open to interpretation. Sorry.

JonnieCache2• 14 years ago

Sorry to nitpick, but don't you mean highpass filter? You want to keep the assholes out ;)

dx41002• 14 years ago

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.

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

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

savrajsingh• 14 years ago

Yeah!!

KirinDave• 14 years ago

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.

workhorse• 14 years ago

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

brianbreslin• 14 years ago

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

Firehed2• 14 years ago

You can still use your physical key (which is probably how you locked the door if you left without your phone)

coopdog• 14 years ago

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)

pxlpshr2• 14 years ago

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!

crazypyro2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

pxlpshr2• 14 years ago

It's installed on the inside of the door, on top of the existing locking system.

My comment was mostly about consumer confidence when it's hanging on a j-hook at a retail store, or standing alone through through another distribution outlet.

GavinB• 14 years ago

This goes on the inside of the door. Would-be thieves would never see it.

The image lower down on the page (next to "Easily install") is MUCH clearer about what this is and how it works. If the creators are reading this, I'd suggest swapping it in for the image in front of the video.

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

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.

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

mcdowall• 14 years ago

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.

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

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.

rahulvohra• 14 years ago

Congrats guys. I miss our Lockitron :)

cmwelsh• 14 years ago

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

nico2• 14 years ago

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.

ccamrobertson2• 14 years ago

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

nico2• 14 years ago

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!

psychotik• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

dror• 14 years ago

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.

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

We used a third party payment processor for this reason. We also let people tweet their order number: https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/backer%20number%20lockitron

shykes• 14 years ago

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!

artpop• 14 years ago

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.

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

TCP/IP/BT4

timbre• 14 years ago

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.

georgeott• 14 years ago

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)

bhudman• 14 years ago

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.

idigit2• 14 years ago

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.

rwitoff• 14 years ago

Sorry but products are getting mixed up here. There is an older "Lockitron deadbolt kit" that was $295, and that's not what's being pre-ordered here.

paulgerhardt10• 14 years ago

Sorry about that! As other commenters have mentioned, that was a holdover from our first generation lock. It has been updated to the correct price now.

As confirmation, you can verify through Amazon Payments that cards are only authed for a max charge of $149.

EGreg2• 14 years ago

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?

ender7• 14 years ago

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.

nodata2• 14 years ago

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

joshmangel• 14 years ago

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

exolab• 14 years ago

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

francov88• 14 years ago

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

spo81rty• 14 years ago

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

Lockitron: $500K of Reservations in One Day

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