Amazon Key - Lock Compatibility, etc

First, the bad news: so far, the system does not integrate with anything else. That may be intentional to protect them from liability, but it’s weird in a 2018 home automation devices. But so it is.

The Key-compatible locks are made by Yale and Kwikset, yet don’t work with those brands’ own apps. They also can’t connect with a home-security system or smart-home gadgets that work with Apple and Google software.

The good news is that the lock itself has, as one of my engineering professors would’ve said “measurable physical events.” So if you let the camera unlock the lock, you could put a contact sensor or vibration sensor on the moving deadbolt itself and get integration that way.

Some people in the community have done this with dumb deadbolts: it’s the same idea. It’s the sensor which will then trigger whatever else you want to trigger, not the camera or lock itself.

It’s still a super limited application, because only Amazon delivery people will be able to trigger the lock, but you could do it.

And of course this does require actually installing the lock, although you could just have it sitting on a demo board Inside your house as long as it is still within range of the camera, which is the base station for the lock.

Or you could install it on the exterior of the house in the wall next to the garage door and use it as a pin pad, in which case you could use it for other delivery drivers as well by giving them the pin code. :sunglasses:

See the following for some discussions of using locks as pin pads in this fashion, although not specifically the Amazon key system lock. And you would still have to have the extra sensor to capture the physical movement of the lock.

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