How do smart locks work? Is online control necessary?

Smart locks have been around for more than 40 years, and their penetration rate in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea has reached more than 70%. It can be said to be one of the earliest smart home products. However, for domestic consumers, smart locks are still a novelty. According to statistics, the penetration rate of smart locks in my country is less than 3%. The first time many people saw smart locks was in popular TV series such as \”My Love from the Star\”, \”Ode to Joy\”, \”The First Half of My Life\”, and \”A Smiling Love\”.

Consumers’ understanding of smart locks is limited to password unlocking and fingerprint unlocking functions. When purchasing similar products, celebrity models of the same model play an important guiding role. Many friends are even more worried about purchasing smart locks. Are smart locks really smart? Will smart locks leak privacy? Will smart locks imprison themselves like the robot in \”Enemies Mechanical\”? Today, we will discuss this issue.

How smart locks work

Only by understanding how smart locks work can we understand it better. The basic structure of a smart lock is to use a motor to drive a mechanical lock cylinder to complete the original manual turning of the key. Smart locks are the product of a combination of traditional door locks, electronic information technology, biometric technology, and Internet of Things technology. They incorporate many scientific and technological achievements of human society and have built-in embedded processors and smart monitoring systems, which greatly improve the efficiency of opening and closing doors. , and at the same time, it is more perfect in aspects such as door lock security alarms.

Traditional door lockWhen opening the door, you need to take out the key, insert the key, rotate it 3 times, remove the key, and open the door, a total of 7 actions; while the smart lock only needs to recognize the fingerprint and open the door, a total of 2 actions to open the door. When closing the door, the traditional door lock needs to close the door, take out the key, insert the key, rotate it 3 times, and remove the key, a total of 7 actions; while the smart lock only requires 1-2 actions, close the door or close the door and lift up to lock. The smart lock reduces the number of door-opening actions by 5 and the door-closing action by 5-6, which is a huge leap in convenience.

How to open smart locks

Mainstream mid-to-high-end smart lock products have as many as six opening methods: fingerprint, password, card swipe, key, Bracelet, mobile phone remote unlocking, etc. Although the penetration rate of smart locks in foreign developed countries is high, the technology of existing products on the market is often lagging behind. Japan and South Korea are still in a non-networked state, and the main unlocking methods are passwords and card swiping; Europe and the United States mainly use Bluetooth and passwords, and there are not many networked products.

Among them, fingerprint recognition is divided into two types: optical recognition and semiconductor recognition. Optical recognition usually does not have live body detection. If someone copies your fingerprint and makes it into a fingerprint cover, it can open the door of your home. Semiconductor recognition usually supports live body detection (not all), and it must be a living body to open the door. . Therefore, when we buy a smart lock, we must buy a fingerprint lock that supports life monitoring.

Virtual password

The unlocking methods for entering the password include fixed password and virtual passwordPassword and temporary password. The fixed password is the permanent unlocking password we set; the dummy password is when someone is watching, adding some scrambling numbers before and after the real password to prevent the password from being leaked; the temporary password is when someone comes to visit, you specify A one-time or temporary door opening password.

Remote unlocking by mobile phone is a technology for remotely opening the door for others when it is inconvenient for you to open the door in person. It is mainly realized through WiFi and Bluetooth technology. Some smart locks even use advanced NB-IoT narrowband things. Networking technology.

In addition to fingerprint recognition, biometric technologies such as facial recognition, iris recognition, and voiceprint recognition are not mainstream in the field of smart door locks. They are very rare and often have immature technologies or limited usage conditions. The problem is, at this stage, it is not recommended that everyone buy this type of smart lock.

Safety Analysis of Smart Locks

The domestic smart lock market has just emerged, and many people have great concerns about the security of smart locks. The fear of fingerprints being stolen, the fear of smart lock passwords being leaked, and the fear that networked smart locks will be cracked by hackers are all real problems. Very similar to the early development of domestic mobile phones, a large number of copycat phones flooded the market, and deduction traps abounded. If no one left the mythical fees, they would be gone.

Crack the little black box of smart locks

The same is true for the smart lock market. The current smart locks are still a blue ocean, with large and small sizes There are thousands of smart lock manufacturers swarming in, so there are not a few products with problems. A large number of smart locks that do not support live fingerprint detection are on sale, and smart locks that can be easily cracked through simple \”little black boxes\” have been repeatedly exposed. However, there are also many excellent smart lock products. Many well-known brands, such as Yale, Caddis, Deschmann, Luke, Advantage, etc., their latest smart locks have largely avoided the above security issues.

In addition to these new security issues, from a mechanical point of view, the security of smart locks is no different from traditional door locks, as long as a lock cylinder and lock with a higher security level are used. body, it also has a very high anti-theft effect.