As long as it not too sharp, otherwise somebody inevitably would injure themselves on it…
As you should be able to see from this close up they include a minimal taper which is enough to help a little bit. In my case the issue was the alignment of the lock parts in the through hole which cause the lock to stop retracting about halfway through.
A more conical shape might help a bit more but would probably require a longer throw.
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More taper! More taper! More taper!
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Dennis Ma the owner of Town Steel will be live with CLK Supplies next Tuesday on You Tube.
I hope to get some questions about their “MiFare” rfid integration answered.
Their locks look like good drop in replacements and have keypads, rfid and a key hole. Price wise they are competitive with the level lock touch but sound like they are good quality.
If the answers are any good then I will look at ordering one for evaluation. These are not going to be suitable to put over an existing lock but will replace a standard lock with no adjustment to the door. (Although door alignment could still be an issue if it already is)
There are some rfid remote controlled deadbolts such as this, you could in theory hook up an xac or similar to interact with the unlock button on the remote.
The TownSteel locks use MiFare DESfire EV1 key cards but they think that any card would probably work (depending on the product range)…
They don’t do any magic card detection, so implants might work but they did say reading might be an issue. So I will probably be buying one on payday for evaluation.
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Was searching for newer products…unfortunately no luck. The 3 companies I found were: August, Level, and Wyze
None of these products directly use RFID sadly, even after a few revisions. Someone did use NFC disks with their iPhone, but I know it’s not what we are looking for…
Just bumping this to see if anyone else found something or finished creating something yet for renters.
I really want to get a lock with compatibility for my new implants, and would love a solution that doesn’t involve trying to flash old firmware to a Samsung. Any progress in this project?
What implants? I know there’s an Amazon deadbolt that works with implants
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So I looked into this more. SwitchBot Lock looks to work with existing deadbolts (no need to change locks; good for renters), SwitchBot Keypad can be purchased either with or without fingerprint scanner, and the SwitchBot Card is 13.56 MHz ISO14443A.
Company claims: “Encrypted for even more security. Every SwitchBot Card uses finance level encryption methods to ensure the safe storage of passwords and prevent others from copying cards and using your password information.”
But I’m sure we can figure it out 
Says you can add more cards via their app, so we might be able to enroll implant rather than copying.
hmmm 
. I might be interested in trying it out.
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@TheCyborgFirefighter, This is exactly what I need. Keep us posted on your results if you decide to give it a try.
I wonder if anybody knows anybody at switchbot? If this is a javacard application, It might be interesting to explore a official relationship between switchbot and VivoKey / Fidesmo
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I am VERY interested, I might pull the trigger when I get back home
One of the video reviews of the switchbot keypad mentioned that the included card is a mifare classic and that generic M1 fobs work just fine. I wonder if it can read glassies and if the stock firmware behaves well with ntag chips?
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I’m curious if it could read an ntag or not…
Some systems will take both, some won’t
I do have a Xm1, but programming it has gone from clueless to somehow hilariously wrong
I was trying to autopwn the con hotel card, and it just kept trying the exact same number repeatedly and saying 6days
I’m going to begin attempting a conversion of an August lock to RFID with an xACv2. I’d like to at some point build an Arduino based(or similar)smart lock from scratch. The main issue is my complete lack of 3D modeling skills. The plan was to use the august lock project as a learning experience for how I want electronics to operate. Then figure out a lock design later. If anyone wants to help with the 3d aspect of things be my guest. Eventually I will pour time into it, but it will be slow going and I will be learning as I go.
The main push for this project initially was cost, but with switchbot costing just below $150 USD, and if it works with NTAGs or the APEX then I may not waste the time. On the other hand with the open source lock it could be a more private option offering only RFID and doesn’t require an account with a third party for all the other features the switchbot offers. As I’m only interested in the RFID, compatibility with an apartment lock, and low external profile.
One question I have is what’s the lowest profile i can make the coil for LF or HF? Could I make it a
paintable sticker with coils laying more side by side rather than stacked on top of each other?
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It seems like the most common desire in this thread is a dead simple, RFID only, no internet, over-thumbturn (same as gimdow and switchbot) solution. A big benefit I see of using existing deadbolts is the addon stuff has almost no requirement to be sturdy (metal) anymore. As long as the external module just sends over the tag data and doesn’t do any validation, there shouldn’t be bad downsides to the external module being trivial to smash or access the internals of, right? (Of course there are some downsides, but on the “security by obscurity” debate I’m of the opinion that if what you want is something with comparable or better security to your actual lock, any deadbolt add on tag unlock system realistically already more than fulfills that, even if most of the electronics are on the outside of the door)
It would be cool if printing could be used for most mechanical parts (mostly the housings and electronics mounts, but from what I’ve seen, even printed things like gears can be surprisingly reliable) and COTS mechanical (heatset inserts bolts etc) and electrical parts bought in bulk by someone and sold soldered together in kits at cost + 20% or whatever. Maybe this project could finally push to a V1 if the lock design is taken care of by the door, and part manufacture mostly taken care of by the user (don’t have to worry about batch size). I’m assuming many people interested in this have access to a printer anyways and pre-assembled kits can be sold for those that don’t, or that don’t want to do the assembly process.
For a no-bells system, the only electronics needed should be a motor, two battery holders, two bluetooth chips, a LF antenna, a microcontroller, and some type of sensor(s) (two limit switches keeps it nice and simple and cheap). is there anything expensive I’m missing there? If not, I can’t see that BOM running more than $50 or so, although I’m not very most familiar with prices of this kind of stuff. Plus maybe $20 for all the non-printed mechanical parts.
It seems to me like the thing most are looking for, at least on here, is a lot simpler than a) anything on the market that works with tags, and b) a lot of the options that have been looked into for open-source manufacture thus far. I personally don’t care about any internet integration, encrypted signals, deadbolt replacements, any tag other than RFID, etc. The only “extra” features I can see being useful to me (and presumably others wanting a simple and relatively cheap add in type thing) are notification of low battery and confirmation of locking, both could be done with an outside-facing LED or beeper.
I’m also a fan of replacing the added-on thumb turn with a button to solve the problem of it being relatively difficult to turn by hand because of the relatively high torque motor (implemented a bit up-thread in the capstone project post, a version of which with better battery life would meet all my needs). Then you would only encounter the high torque when using an actual key, which doesn’t seem to be much of an inconvenience to me, as long as it is physically possible. Just give an RFID tag to anyone coming to your house a lot, the key is a backup.
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