Wow, I'm amazed that they got wifi to work in the lock itself, vs. using a low-power thing like Zigbee to a base station with AC power.
Also, BT 4.0 LE is perfect for this -- since there's no NFC in the iPhone 5, I suspect BT 4.0 LE will end up taking the place of NFC for a lot of "heavier duty" NFC applications -- not that the Bluetooth protocol is great or elegant, but it's a lot easier to work with than NFC, and now BT 4.0 LE exists on both major smartphone platforms.
All my earlier criticism of not having a local ACL and local RF communication to the lock, vs. going to/from the Internet, is now resolved.
The only thing they're missing is a BT 4.0 LE dongle (which I've seen on Kickstarter called "hone" http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/690528216/hone-for-iphon... -- you could put that on your keyring and use it as an expensive HID proxcard replacement. Same thing works for electronic leash.
Now all they need to do is support 5-10 locksets in some kind of private/small business network (vs. putting in a HID access control system), for 0-99 users, and they'll be really innovative. Managing a single door with 0-5 people is comparatively easy; managing an office with turnover is a lot harder, and businesses would happily pay $1-2k for a system to cover their doors and employees with a nice LDAP/AD/FB/etc. interface.
Since you can upload your own firmware, it would be entirely possible for a customer to build this.
Also, BT 4.0 LE is perfect for this -- since there's no NFC in the iPhone 5, I suspect BT 4.0 LE will end up taking the place of NFC for a lot of "heavier duty" NFC applications -- not that the Bluetooth protocol is great or elegant, but it's a lot easier to work with than NFC, and now BT 4.0 LE exists on both major smartphone platforms.
All my earlier criticism of not having a local ACL and local RF communication to the lock, vs. going to/from the Internet, is now resolved.
The only thing they're missing is a BT 4.0 LE dongle (which I've seen on Kickstarter called "hone" http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/690528216/hone-for-iphon... -- you could put that on your keyring and use it as an expensive HID proxcard replacement. Same thing works for electronic leash.
Now all they need to do is support 5-10 locksets in some kind of private/small business network (vs. putting in a HID access control system), for 0-99 users, and they'll be really innovative. Managing a single door with 0-5 people is comparatively easy; managing an office with turnover is a lot harder, and businesses would happily pay $1-2k for a system to cover their doors and employees with a nice LDAP/AD/FB/etc. interface.
Since you can upload your own firmware, it would be entirely possible for a customer to build this.