Living with a Lockitron
I didn’t back the Lockitron when the crowd-funding website went up. I really wanted to but I just refuse to gamble that way, so a year or so ago when I saw you could buy the Lockitron guts for $50 I was intrigued. What happened to Lockitron, did they close shop? I told my friend I was going to pick up the guts and DIY my own Lockitron when he dropped a bomb on me, he had one sitting in a box that was collecting dust and I could have it. A real, working, unicorn.
Sega Game Gear battery life
I set up the Lockitron as soon as possible and flicked the deadbolt open and closed with my iPhone giggling. It was working. I stepped out of my apartment keys in hand and locked and unlocked the door. I didn’t trust it just yet so I always had my keys. The batteries died about a week later. Not just any batteries, but Energizer Lithiums, the expensive ones that aren’t rechargeable.
I know! I’ll pick up eight Eneloop rechargeable batteries and just cycle them! Yeah that didn’t work. You see the Lockitron loves the higher voltage Lithiums, so much so that fully charged Eneloops still caused the low battery notification to go off a day later. I wasn’t a happy camper. The Lockitron also did not have a simple way to connect to a wall outlet. I had to jerry rig something together using battery adapters, a wall wart, and 50 feet of wiring because there isn’t a power outlet down the stairs where my front door is. Sigh.
The future is now
After all of these headaches, hurdles, and limitations I now have a deadbolt that unlocks when I come home, unlocks when I ask my phone to do so, and I can send “keys” to friends or pet sitters. So what’s the catch? I had to be a mad scientist to make this all work. Between node.js, soldering, figuring out how to work the API, and even getting my hands on a Lockitron (managed to pick up another one new in box!) this task couldn’t have been done by a “non-nerd”.
Why didn’t Lockitron put a socket on the bottom so you could connect it to wall power? That would have fixed 90% of the issues I had. Batteries just suck for something this critical. The other 10% was just me wanting more options for unlocking my door with Siri or IFTTT.
Locked out
To date I have never been locked out of my apartment due to my Lockitron. I have had two instances which were sketchy at best. One was when the Lockitron stopped responding due to a power outage. I simply had to power cycle it. Had I been without my key I would have been high and dry. Not having a UPS is my fault so it’s on my list of things to get. The second time the Lockitron jammed open after I told it to unlock. It was as if the switch to tell the motor to stop opening malfunctioned. I power cycled it and all was well. Had it jammed closed this would have been much different.
Final words
I love having the Lockitron mostly because it solves the 1st world problem of unlocking the door when my hands are full of grocery bags. It passes the girlfriend test and a few times I’ve sent keys to friends to get into my apartment when I wasn’t available. Is it perfect? Not really. I had to take things into my own hands to make it work how I wanted. From wiring it to the wall to sending API calls to tell it to never sleep since the “batteries” will never run out.
I hope Lockitron revisits this form factor for the sake of renters and puts a power port on the side. Oh and I hope they ship this time.
