An Overview of Smart Locks

In the past, when you wanted to secure an item, you would lock it away from others. Whether you used one of the various forms of a padlock, or used a form of a door lock, you would feel at easy knowing your item is safe. Now due to the ever expanding world of technology, there are more technologically advanced ways to keep your items safe. These locks that use modern technology are called smart locks.  According to Wikipedia, a smart locks is an “electromechanical lock which is designed to perform locking and unlocking operations on a door when it receives such instructions from an authorized device using a wireless protocol and a cryptographic key to execute the authorization process.”

In the world of smart locks, there are two different major types, smart padlocks and smart door locks. Smart door locks usually replace a doors current deadbolt, or in some cases a doors current handle. To work, smart locks need a lock and a key. But unlike doors in the traditional sense, keys for smart locks are generally the user’s smartphone or a key fob configured specifically for the lock.  The smartphone or the fob wirelessly performs the authentication needed to automatically unlock the door. When the key is on a user’s phone, it allows the user to send the virtual key to others. Say you have a friend coming over to your home, but they will arrive earlier than you. You can let them in by sending the lock key over email or SMS. Then you, as the sender, can set a specific time slot that the sent key will work. This ensures that your friend cannot unlock your door at any random time. Many smart locks are managed through an app, so users are able to see specific times their door was unlocked.

The other major type of smart locks are smart padlocks. Smart padlocks are able to work very similarly to smart door locks, where a user’s phone is able to unlock the padlock. Many manufacturers of smart padlocks launch apps to manage them. When the users phone is near to the padlock, the app will show that the device is in range. With a simple tap of a button, the padlock can be unlocked. Manufactures hope that customers will purchase many of their smart locks and manage them on the app. This would allow users to lock and unlock many things like their bike, gates, and tool boxes all with one “key”. Another form of smart padlocks are ones that use a user’s finger print to unlock. To unlock the lock, a user would have to place their finger on the scanner. This prevents the user from losing their key, and doesn’t require the user to have their smart phone with them to unlock. Most finger print padlocks do offer the users a “backway in” in case their finger print does not work for whatever reason, and function just like other smart padlocks. Over the course of the capstone, I will compare the benefits and disadvantages of these smart locks