The little guy is growing up and soon needs to be able to unlock the door on his own. Keys or tags he will definately lose the first day and the current app based lock is a no starter without a smart phone. PIN is also questionable if he will remember.
There are locks with fingerprint scanners out there, that would work for him. But how does it work in practice? My laptop fails to recognize my fingerprint more often than it succeeds and of course there has been many security scares about finger print scanners being fooled easily.
Maybe it is just my references being really old, is the situation good today? Or are there better solutions we havenāt considered?
I had a Kaadas push-pull door lock with fingerprint sensor for several years and this came with a Z-Wave module. I recently removed it due to poor performance and complaints from the family. I wrote a more detailed post mortem if you are interested.
Now I installed an Aqara A100 door lock which is much more intuitive. The fingerprint sensor performs very well and is right on the door handle where you put your thumb anyway. A general issue with fingerprint sensors is that they assume a certain finger size and in my experience donāt always work well with small fingers. For example, this door lock works very reliably for my 14-year-old, but not so much for my 5-year-old - we were able to add his fingerprint, but recognition only works well if he presses the thumb accurately at the centre of the sensor. He is fine with that and just tries 2-3 times, and I hope reliability increases with age and finger size.
Other than that, the A100 comes with Zigbee and Bluetooth, and it works well with Homekit, however, it doesnāt work with non-Aqara Zigbee hubs, and there is no Bluetooth integration into HA.
So, in summary, the Aqara A100 works well including its fingerprint sensor, but no HA integration in sight.
When i changed my front door guy who installed it said that fingerprint is a bad idea for houses with children - at best you must re-learn fingers of child(s) every few months, when they become unreadable. Children grow, their fingers grow, too - and become unreadable.
But, for any decent finger recognition a GOOD (read expensive) lock is a must, or youāll gain nothing but problems. In my case a good quality fingerprint system would be in the range of 500ā¬ (no need to say that i chose old-fashioned key).
and of course there has been many security scares about finger print scanners being fooled easily.
hehā¦donāt worry, 90% of burglars donāt break-in through front door, but through a window, back doorā¦ Burglars arenāt dumbā¦ they know that front door are usually extra strong, anti-burglar built etcā¦ itās not worthed to waste time with that. A quick punch on the window glass, a good bump into backdoor and youāre inā¦
Hehe, for sure. We have a glass door at the back and that is no issue for the insurace company. But the front door lock must be tested according to security class X
That is like, when Apple said Macs could not get malware, but in fact the market share they had was just too low for it to profitable for malware makers.
Once they market share rose so did the amount of malware.
Even though 90% of burglars today do not go through the front door, it is still 10% that does and if they find an easy way through the front door with just a computer or mobile phone, then that is the one they will take.
It might require a bit of an electronic geek to come up with the gear for it, but here in Europe many there are borders to many poorer countries from the old east block with highly skilled and educated people that can earn much more by developing such gear to be used to burgle Europe than what can be earned in the few jobs available otherwise.
These highly skilled people have already made front for ATM to scan creditcards, scanners that can credit cards when passing by them and so on.
Well, you should also ask yourself WHY would anyone break into your house - do you have anything of high value inside which is commonly known? Random breaks are not that often, usually thiefs pick a house which is worthed and they tend to observe it beforeā¦as goes for ārandomthiefsā goes, they wonāt bother with fingerprint lock, but, as sais,theyāll grab nearest rock and throw it into nearest window. So, next step is breakproof foil on glassesā¦
But, i agree, itās not an excuse to make your house as secure as possibleā¦
Personally, iād go away from fingerprints for house entrance. Too expensive, too unreliableā¦ and you still have to have a key with you alwaysā¦ power can go out, battery can go deadā¦
and the current app based lock is a no starter without a smart phone. PIN is also questionable if he will remember.