August Home is a company that currently specializes in automating doors. They make deadbolt locks, keypads, doorbell cameras, and a hub for remote access. When my parents recently mentioned they wanted to automate their lock I knew I wanted to keep it simple so I immediately thought of August. What I like about their deadbolt design is it doesn't require you to replace your keyed locks, just the part inside the house. Below is the mission statement from their site.
At August Home, we believe that the door to the home isn’t just about keeping the bad guys out. It’s also about letting the right people in"at the right times, on the right terms, and always under the homeowner’s control.
Our commitment is to design products and services that let everyday people monitor and manage entry into their homes from wherever they are. We’ve designed a thoughtful system of products and services that equally delight and comfort. We’ve established partnerships that make it possible for our customers to come home from work and find a sparkling clean house, the pantry stocked, the dog walked, the laundry done, and that pesky leak under the kitchen sink finally fixed.
Our goal is to help make life simpler and more secure.
So let's see if their August Smart Lock with HomeKit can make good on their simpler and more secure promise.
Features and Specifications:
» Control your door and keep track of who comes and goes, all from your phone.
» Send guest temporary keys from anywhere instantly from the August app.
» Automatically locks your door behind you.
» Tell Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant to control your lock.
» Attaches to your existing deadbolt and installs in about 10 minutes.
This August Smart Lock with HomeKit is their second generation device. It is a pretty large device, measuring 3.4” in diameter with a 2.22” projection from the door, and weighing a hefty 13.9oz. As you can imagine, and would hope, the bulk of the construction is metal so the security should be sufficient to overcome smash and grab situations. It uses Bluetooth V4.0 to communicate and (4) AAA batteries to power it up (which are included). It is HomeKit certified and has a free app available from your respective apps store. It has a 30 day money back guarantee and a 1 year warranty.
What I found most interesting about this device is that it doesn't replace your lock, it replaces the knob on the inside. So this means you don't have to have the lock re-keyed to match your old keys, or keys made for your new lock. Another cool thing is no one on the outside has to know you have a smart lock. Some of the smart locks out there actually illuminate a ring; presumably so you can see where to put the key, but this also makes it known that you have a smart lock.
