Just thinking out loud here… Anyone here find it useful/wise to have a lock (thinking about the Polylock, since it’s available and USEFUL in both the states and europe) unlock when the system detects a valid QR code?
I know that with bluetooth or NFC we could have it done but I’m thinking about my little girl (6 yr old) or my wife’s parents who don’t have a smartphone.
That way I could give them a small credit card sized paper with the code on it and nothing else… no one would know what it was…
Should be too hard to do. Setup the lock as an OAuth endpoint and then you just encode that website with a QR code. The software side would be relatively easy to do.
One thing I’d question though is the usefulness of it vs. a physical key. It’s easier to hand onto, I guess, but also a lot more complicated to use. If you have a key it’s simple and easy to get in the door: Pull out the key, unlock, you’re in. With this method you have to pull out the QR code… pull out your phone… open the app or navigate through your menu to the right place, take a picture… wait for the site to pull up… wait for ST to respond to the OAuth and send the unlock code to your door.
The up side is your have more security: If it’s lost, no one really knows what it’s for or what it does. This is especially true if they don’t know WHO lost it. On the other hand, a lost key is useless if the finder doesn’t know who lost it either. You’re not going to randomly check house around a city hoping that you get lucky!
The downside with the QR code idea that I can see are:
Some people (like older, less tech saavy individuals… same… mother- or father-in-law?) might not understand that ANYONE could use this code and therefore may not be as protective of it as they would a physical key.
If someone finds a lost QR code, even if they don’t know what it does, they might scan it just to see what it’s about and then you have your door randomly unlocking at odd times of the day. (The likelihood that someone find the code, randomly scans it, and your door unlock right at the time that a burglar happens to check your door to see if it’s unlocked is probably pretty low… but it is an added safety concern.)
Hmm… very interesting idea. Again, I think it should be pretty easy to setup on a very basic level in ST. But it wouldn’t have some of the more advanced functions they were talking about in that video, or the advanced security surrounding it.
A more complex system could be fun though… put an old tablet in a window pointing the camera out. Whenever it reads a QRcode it an HTTP request to ST (not sure how easy or hard that would be to do) with the QRcode’s ID.
A SmartApp would then validate that code and send an unlock message to the door lock. The SmartApp could also manage the codes (enabling or disabling them) based on user input. Conceivable even setting up a schedule (ie: This code works from 3pm - 4pm when your daughter is coming home from school, but no other times or this code only works from 8am to 8pm… we don’t want the in-laws visiting at times outside of that) or even one use codes (This code will unlock the door, but once it’s used it’s automatically deleted from the app).
In theory it should be doable… the hardest part would probably be the part that reads the code then sends the data to the SmartApp.