Have you ever gotten to work, or even away on holidays and wondered – did I lock the door? Wonder no more, now you can check your smartphone and if the door was left unlocked – lock it.
The Kevo smart door lock is currently available in Australia through Masters Home Improvement stores. It allows you to paid your smartphone and unlock your door by simply having the phone in close proximity and tapping on the door lock. However, there is no way to use your smartphone if you’re not physically near the door. Until now.
Coming to the US in a few months (There seems no reason why the Kevo Plus functionality won’t be available in Australia as it is a software upgrade primarily), Kevo owners who upgrade to the new plan (pricing unannounced) will be sent a bluetooth enabled gateway. This gateway is a small device which you plug into your router via an ethernet cable.
That connection then allows you to securely send commands from your encrypted Kevo account to the home and unlock or lock the door.
Additionally, when released this Kevo subscription service will allow multiple locks to be grouped so if you have a front and back door lock on your home, you can email new keys to both in one go rather than having to do it all over and over again for each lock and each user.
Security will be paramount here, and better smarter people than me will test this in the coming months, but lets just say that if someone wants into your house bad enough, they’ll bash the door down – or use a window, it would be highly unlikely a single user would or could be targeted to breach their bluetooth gateway – instead, what Kwikset and Kevo need to maintain is a strong protection of that Bluetooth gateway in the home.
One additional benefit of real-time-anywhere connectivity to your Kevo door lock is you can see all the actions performed on the lock. Which users locked and unlocked the door and when – this information is currently only downloaded to your phone when you are close to the door and unlock or lock it.
Kevo Plus – I for one – cannot wait!
Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head.
He produces and hosts several popular podcasts, EFTM, Two Blokes Talking Tech, Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars, The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, and the Private Feed. He is the resident tech expert for Triple M on radio across Australia, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9’s Today Show and appears regularly on 9 News, A Current Affair and Sky News Early Edition.
Father of three, he is often found in his Man Cave.
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