Didn’t event know zigbee was still a thing
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It is a rather big deal in the Smart Home space. The Philips® Hue Smart Lighting uses it. Some Alexa echo devices act as zigbee hubs for the many smart home products use it.
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The topic so useful for me. Thanks very much.
Trying to get caught up on all this, but if you haven’t found a shop to cut out the metal parts yet… I do own a machine shop 
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ok, a little out of the box and not the solution for everyone for sure, but I would love to mount the lock on the wall side and have the bolt slide into the door. That way it would be easy to hard wire power. No batteries. You’d still need a pretty weird looking door handle mounted on the wall, but whatever.
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Interesting… What if It was a deadbolt? Mounted and wired in the wall with the bolt that extends into the door. then the handle can just be a regular unlocked door handle latch. You present your hand to the wall next to the door, It makes a noise or lights an led and retracts the bolt, and then you just open the door like normal.
Just woke up, still not awake, had a terrible idea for ya, keep the unit contained on the door like the commercial ones, run it with 1 or 2 123A size lithium rechargable batteries, but don’t be stingy with the power, make it actuate quickly and reliably. To recharge, apply a low DC voltage across the plates that latch and deadbolt go into. You could even use springs in the cutout holes in the door frame instead of the plates to make sure it contacts the deadbolt and latch. Solves having to replace batteries, it would always be fully charged, and retrofitable in an existing door/frame since you would only need to drill 2 small holes in the frame, and fish the wires through. You would have to electrically separate the latch and deadbolt though since they will be part of the circuit.
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I like that. What about inductive charging plates in the door jamb?
I just hate permanent things that run on batteries.
Something that requires inductive charging still runs on batteries 
Why make things so complicated? Just run a wire. If it’s done cleanly, it’ll be next to invisible. And it’ll take you less time to run a wire cleanly that modify the door and jamb to install an inductive charger.
Problem with the bolt going into the door is you are making it many times easier to kick that door in.
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Ohh, good point.
Except not everyone has an outlet near the door, and running a wire can be ugly
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ok, it runs on batteries, but they are constantly re-charged and you don’t have to replace them all the time.
My door is reinforced enough that I don’t think it will make much difference which way the bolt goes. Not going to work for every door, but I would think that most external doors are strong enough if installed properly.
Yes, I was pulling your leg. But more seriously, if you go to the trouble of modifying your door to charge up batteries from the mains wirelessly, just power the device directly, it’s just plain simpler.
Either you need batteries because you have no power source nearby or no way to modify the door cleanly (which is my case) or you don’t.
Yes, you could directly power the device mounted in the door by running a wire across the hinge side of the door and leaving room to flex, or you could rig some terminals that re-connect each time you close the door on the latch side. I don’t care much for either solution. The hinge side would be difficult to hide and may not look good and also subject wire to constant flexing and the latch side would create a wear item in the contacts. Using a wireless charger to charge batteries mounted in the door works for me. The batteries are only needed to keep the unit operational while the door is open, and they are re-charged whenever the door is shut. All that is assuming that an inductive charging system could be created small enough to fit in the door jamb, but it seems do-able to me.
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Do you even need that? I don’t know about you but I do not try to unlock my open door or lock it… 
I tend to close it first. Actually I need a magnet sensor to stop my door auto locking while it’s open.
Maybe. I don’t know enough about the planned electronics to know if that would be desirable or not. I’m talking about a door mounted system here. Mounting in the wall/jam removes all that.
Run the bit of wire that needs to flex parallel to the hinge: It’ll only twist a quarter turn at each door opening. Thin wire painted the same color as the door will be almost invisible. If you want it truly invisible, embed it in the door, make it exit right at the edge hinge-side, run it along the edge for a couple inches to let it twist freely, then into the jamb and into the wall. It’ll only be visible if you look for it, when the door is open.
Fun fact. Most houses have a door bell button on the external frame of the door, usually low voltage, just need a proper adapter. And if you live in a place like me some idiot before you cut the doorbell wires off flush on the outside and glued a wireless doorbell over the top. So, there’s already 2 wires in my door frame that aren’t used. I personally just need to tone them out to find the source, put a different power supply on the other side, then pull the little stubs of wire back inside the wall then to the door jamb through the small holes I suggested earlier (not saying it would be easy but it would be less work than pulling new wires). Put a couple springs with contacts on the end in the holes, then any time the door is shut, the latch contacts one spring, deadbolt on the other. Edit: I’m in the US and what I have said about the door bell wire location is typical here. Also, for long runs like that it’s usually low voltage ac, the old security system in my home runs on 24v ac for example.
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