Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Kwikset Aims At Smartphone Crowd With New Door Lock

It looks like the humble front door is the center of a lot of innovation nowadays, as a number of vendors have started to try to figure out how to combine the ubiquitous smartphone with unlocking your front door. The latest in that area comes from a venerable name in locks--Kwikset, which announced a brand new product called the Kwikset Kevo. According to Spectrum Brands Holdings, which owns the Kwikset brand, it has teamed with Unikey Technologies to launch a smartphone-enabled door lock, which lets users unlock their doors with a simple touch. The new lock uses Bluetooth to turn any smartphone into an electronic key, similar to the proximity-enabled touch locks on many cars.

Kwikset's new Kevo is not the only smartphone-connected front door-lock in the world; Lockitron, a crowdsourced hardware company, has been working on developing a smartphone-activated lock, although the product is still in pre-order and has yet to ship. Another, local company--Santa Monica-based DoorBot, has been developing a smartphone and camera-enabled doorbell which connects the humble doorbell to users via their smartphone, and recently set a shipping date of September.

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