Keypad Access Control for Homes -- Yes Please ! pt1
We need better Keypad Access Control for our homes, flats and businesses
Its Great being on the phone a lot sometimes, chatting away with customers and at the same time learning how the industry needs to catch up with the wants and needs of the customer and people out there.
Some great ideas come from customers wants and needs and a few examples of these great ideas we feel needs careful consideration from the manufactures out there who make the kit we sell.
A guy called one day with a problem that he had and was looking for a solution.
He has a holiday home in Wales (gods country)that he rents out every so often. He wants to manage access from his home in the UK somewhere. His problem was that if someone books his holiday home on his web site, or phone him and book the home for a week or so, someone needs to go to site and meet the clients when they turn up at the house. Obviously this means that time is taken up by someone waiting for them to turn up. It was thought that perhaps the keys could be put in a key box and all you have to do is give the guys the code and when they turn up they simply get the keys with the code given and then open the door.
In reality there is nothing wrong with this concept but then the clients know that code and obviously the customer had concerns that that code could be used at any time to gain access to the house, and unless the code is changed the security is compromised. So all the effort and time saved on allowing the customer to gain access themselves is defeated with the fact that someone still has to go to site and change the code on the key box, Obviously, this option does have the benefit of flexibility.

What would be ideal for this customer would be a key box or a lock on the door that allows you to send commands to the lock via GSM (mobile phone network) also would allow you to change the code remotely, perhaps download an audit trail to see at what times people has gained access.
When you start to brainstorm this idea and what I know of kit on the market there is. There are solutions out there that already can do this and on a commercial scale this kit is readily available. But as you may guess you would be investing £1000s in a typical system that would have a serious amount of bells and whistles that would designed for a ministry of defence establishment and not really would it benefit the basic security needs of a front door to a house.
And there lies the problem and off course this would also hinge on the fact that the holiday home has a telephone so the system can connect to the internet.
cont........