Love this idea. Going to add to the voices in favour of modding an existing design. If specific hardware limitations crop up in future that would be a good time to pour energy into custom hardware design. The deadbolt internals seem somewhat standard which is to our advantage, but fully custom design takes control out of third party hands.
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Actually this is the crux of the issue… they are not standard. The only part that is standard is a part we’re already talking about using an off the shelf part for, and that’s the bolt itself. The entire rest of the mechanical design is just as custom as the electronics. No two Samsung Ezon models have the same mechanical design such that a replacement open source PCB could simply be fit to it should the model ever change or be discontinued. On the other hand, the mechanical design is, for the most part, simple. The hurdle in my mind is getting that design actually made… stamped out in quantity, with the required quality, at a practical cost.
I can say that I did take the route of talking to lock makers about buying mechanics or making a special run of locks and it never got anywhere. Possibly one outfit that makes EU cylinder locks might be interested, and we’d jump on that if it were a go - but for this standard US deadbolt style lock, none of the players I talked to were even remotely interested.
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I and many EU customers would be interested in an EU cylinder door lock 
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This is a huge thread. Has anyone talked about using an atmega chip controlling a stepper motor to physically actuate locking lug? Its seems like a simple way of doing it. Then whenever you put a tag up to the door it knows its position and goes the opposite direction for x amount of steps to either lock or unlock the door. You could remove the inside door handle and 3d print a case for the motor and electronics and just add a metal disc to screw it to the external knob and run the reader to the outside of the door. I’m going to try making the basic design and circuits for this next weekend.
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Right now the hurdle that seems most challenging is getting the metal plates DFM’d … then lock in a factory to punch a bunch out so we can design electrical and mechanical around it.
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They could entirely separate from the rest of the electronics and designed at least initially around 1 door knob. But I see the problem with finding someone/company willing to make the plates manufacturable in large quantities.
Just a thought: wouldn’t it be easier to start with existing hardware (Yale comes to mind), rip out the existing PCB and replace it with an open-source design? That way you get to leverage the existing mechanical design, QA, manufacture and range of available options for foreign customers from the lock manufacturer, and you only have to add implant-compatible electronics and firmware.
If you buy in bulk, the final product might not end up much more expensive than the original lock. You might even be able to work out a deal with the manufacturer, to get them to supply the lock sans PCB. You could even sell the replacement PCB with instructions us tinkerers to install into a vanilla lock.
Me, even if it doubles the cost of the lock, I’d buy one in a heartbeat: I’d get a lock many people have tried and reviewed, combined with the certainty that it’d work with my implant, real support from DT for implant-related issues, and the ability to mess with it if I’m not entirely happy. What’s not to love eh?
@anon3825968 I have been following your neverending quest to find a viable door lock and I hereby swear if I ever win the lottery - I will get you a custom door lock made. 
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I think the quest has ended for one simple reason: all the options I have left - short of rolling my own solution - involve messing with a cloud-connected cellphone app to open the lock. Beside the fact that it’s incredibly stupid and inelegant, I can’t stand the idea of the lock getting bricked if the internet goes down, the manufacturer getting my GPS location and all the lock/unlock events in my house, and more importantly the ability to open my door remotely.
Did I mention that I hate the internet of things with a burning passion?
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That may have popped up from time to time
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IoT is the worst.
Are you specifically looking for a deadbolt? @anon3825968 I’ve been eyeing up some electric strike/dead latches on Amazon and Ebay that I might give a shot to fuck around with at work until the community finds something better.
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I’m looking for anything that fits my Finnish door with minimal modifications, as I rent the place temporarily and I won’t be allowed - or willing - to undertake extensive work. Unfortunately, what’s on my door now is a typical Finnish-only mechanism, and very few commercial NFC-enabled replacements fit on it without having to enlarge the mortise and change the strike plate.
Essentially, the products that would work on my door are the Yale Doorman V2N (but it’s NFC-stupid with implants), the Idesco Door Handle 7N (NFC-stupid also, but less so), the Oviku Nero (IoT, and terrible Android app apparently made by people who rode the short bus to CS school) and the Danalock v3 (IoT and unsuitable app also, but less shoddily made). There are several other products but they look gimmicky, and/or fit the door with crappy double-sided tape, and they’re all IoT also.
I should mention one lock that seems to work great with implants: the ID Lock 150. There are several videos of people using it with Mifare chips on Youtube. But it’s made for Scandinavian doors (Swedish Industry Standard 817383). Still, that’s one attractive product. I may install it in my own house when I get around to finding it and buying it
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Not really no… easier for a one-off yes, but not for a manufacturable product, which is what we’re shooting for… trust me I have had thoughts about it… but in the end the best path forward is the harder one.
I can tell you from experience that door locks, even purchased in bulk, are always expensive. The best margins I could get back when I bought $25,000 worth of Samsung Ezon locks was still only like %12-%15 at best… so really the cost for this approach would be retail + PCB … and still we would be faced with the same problem in the end - we would be at the mercy of a commercial lock manufacturer. If they changed anything about the mechanics, we would have to change our stuff, possibly making thousands of pieces of inventory worthless. It’s just not worth it in the end… at least not as a manufacturing approach. As a one-off, sure, but that’s not really what we’re trying to solve for.
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What kind of volume of sales would you be expecting for something more specific to the bio hacking world? I might be able to personally do smaller volumes of a product for sale to others.(I have the breadboard prototyping almost done and can access the tools to do smaller runs of the metal plates and such.
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Really at this point it’s about getting DFM input from some lock making factories which can do part runs for us, mod the mechanical design where necessary, then build electronics and plastics around it. Plates made by the lock factory are going to probably be press cut and shaped, so there may be certain design considerations that might need to be made for such a manufacturing process.
Really? What sorts of tools and processes? It might be worth exploring making a few plates… or PM me if you don’t want to give more detail here.
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Thanks for this. IOT is popping up all over and it seems to be a never ending battle to backfill people on the risks. I’m happy to see anyone else in the world that hates the stuff as much as I do. Great concept, terrible implementation.
On a lock related note, let’s try and drag the lockpicking lawyer or Bosnian Bill into this thread. They would probably have awesome input 
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Wrong: it’s a terrible concept, and a terrible implementation.
The concept is not new: it’s the mainframe-terminal model - where the mainframes used to be run by people who treated their users like shit, provided the services they wanted and not what the users wanted, and had all the control over what the users got to be able do or not. The personal PC had freed us from the tyranny of the mainframe and the bastard operators from hell.
Now we’re right back where we started (the final nail in the coffin being SaaS) with an additional twist: the sumbitches running the servers rape your personal data and monetize the shit out of you - something the mainframe operators of years past didn’t do.
When I was a kid, this is not the future I was promised, let me tell ya…
But I digress.
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Wrong: IoT is, as a concept, great if you consider it a framework… an enablement technology like wifi, ethernet, and http protocols themselves… it can be implemented terribly or enable a terrible model… but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are open source IoT devices and management frameworks… but anyway…
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IoT is fine on its own. The Silicon Valley version of IoT with centralised servers and terrible apps? - not so great.
M2M and decentralised IoT has its place IMO
I agree. But my point is, we’ve had decentralized computing for 40 years thanks to the personal computer, and that’s coming very close to being taken away from us due in large parts to people’s complacency, lack of basic computer education, and Big Data companies’ raging and unprincipled greed. As a society, we came close to the people having control over what goes on with their data, and we blew it because the people doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
Decentralized IoT would be great and technically doable, but it won’t happen for the same reasons. IoT is always going to be tragic because people don’t want to know what goes on with their data. They just want to go “oh, shiny!”
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