I’m wondering about having a new front door made by a carpenter. I’d like it to be smart and for the lock to be connected to power (not a battery). I’d like the smart lock to be controllable by Home Assistant and for the whole thing to look like it was designed to be smart from the get go, not ‘made to be smart’ after the fact.
If you were in my shoes, what lock would you use? I was thinking of a multipoint lock but for all the hardware to be hidden inside the door but electrically driven.
There are such a product but they are commercial and, I believe, are made for eu market.
One example is siegenia German brand that makes windows and doors systems.
I post you a link just to have a glimpse how they did it.
I found a way how to hide and install my doors and windows contact sensors based on their ideas.
But you will probably be on your own on this project.
If I should make a smart door from scratch then I would use a standard smart lock.
I am not too sure on the multipoint locking door, because multipoint doors require quite some force to get all the lock points in position and that might be hard to do electrically.
If it is left to the user instead and only the lock turn is smart, then you would not be able to lock the door, if the user had not prepared it first.
Regarding power, then I would try to wire up the battery compartment of the lock with a large powerbank hidden in the door, so it can be accessed and replaced later, because rechargeable batteries will die eventually, but powerpowered locks might work, when the power is gone.
I guess the powerbank would be accessible in an compartment open in the doors edge when the door is in open position, which then will hide and protect it in the closed position.
The charging of the powerbank would be done with Qi charger placed in the door frame and the reciever pad in the plate that would close off the powerbank compartment.
Again the Qi charger should be accessible for replacement and made so other sizes can be use, which might mean a bigger compartment than what the Qi charger would require initially.
If it is replaced later, then the closing plate might be the only one required to be replaced.
You might have to place multiple charging points, because the door and frame is not that wide, so the coils will be small.
The advantage of the powerbank is that it can be used to drive other things too, like a WiFi door cam.
Thanks Wally - I wanted to use something that looks like it was designed to be smart from the get go and for me, that means mostly built into and hidden inside the door.
I would also want to use mains power (transformed down by all means) rather than rely on a battery and multiple(!) Qi charging points.
I would have thought anything doing video over WiFi would drain a battery very quickly?
Thanks for your thoughts! Am really glad people are contributing to this thread. It’s useful and interesting discussion.
The issue with trying to make a lock yourself is that if the power is all down and the battery is dead too, then you need to be able to open it mechanically and from the inside you might be required to always be able to open it mechanically, so it can be an escape route.
This part is hard to design yourself.
And WiFi is maybe a heavy drain on a battery, but powerbanks can be rather large today. This combined with a PIR or doorbell activation will limit its runtime and especially during the night time you should be able to recharge the powerbank completely.
I have a powerbank here that can recharge my phone completely like 5 or 6 times on a single battery charge, so it can run a lock and a camera for quite some time. Even longer with Qi charging
The problem with the power to the door lock is that the door is usually a complete single moving unit, so you will have to transfer power between the door frame and the door somehow.
Using wires will mean bending and stretching them with each opening/closing, which will eventually rip them apart.
It can of course be done, but you need to protect them. Laptops do it with the hinges, but they are specially designed for exactly this, so you might need to redesign the hinges and still make sure they carry the load of the door.
Multiple hinges can compensate for the lesser load possible on one of the hinges, but more hinges also means you need to make sure everything is aligned perfectly or the hinges will start to cause tension in the opening/closing of the door.
If I were starting from scratch and thinking outside the box I might consider putting the mechanism in the door frame, rather than the door. If you want mains power, that would certainly make things easier.
Why are locks always in the door anyway?
Edit: Apart from electric strike, which I’ve just googled…
The problem with having the mechanism in the door frame is that the mechanism have to be built on both sides of the door, which makes the mechanism complex, and on top of that you will have the handle on the door, so you can unlock and open the door with one hand, which then would have to interact with the mechanism in the door frame.