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I'm at CES taking a look at the shepherd lock which, I passed by this a handful of times when walking around because look at it, it's fairly unassuming and the first keyless smart lock, well, there's a lot of smart locks here at CES.
But here's what struck me about this one.
The reason it's so unassuming is Because it is using an ordinary deadbolt, it is a retrofit Smart Lock.
Again, August does that other smart locks do it, but it is a retrofit touch sensitive deadbolt, like the Quick Set Kibo, but you do not have to replace the lock.
All you do is you snap on this base plate, a couple of screws go in place.
And the lock's gonna work using a little bit of electricity to turn your existing dead bolt into a touch-sensitive mechanism that lets you lock and unlock your door.
That's so cool.
Plus There's neat proprietary technology in here that when you open and close the door, it's gonna sense the angle of the door, so even if you just left your door open a little bit, the app's gonna know and it's gonna send you an alert plus the sensitivity on this Is so precise, apparently, that if someone's coming to pick your lock, it's going to know, it's going to shut down your lock, and it's going to send you an alert.
[SOUND] A lot of that stuff is fairly Standard for smart locks, including a Wi-Fi bridge that is a separate hardware piece.
So, if you want to control the lock remotely, you use the Wi-Fi bridge, and then you can control it from anywhere because most of these functions that you're seeing operate via bluetooth, so you have to be in a very close range.
So again just by touching the dead bolt the lock will talk to your phone, or watch, or key fob via bluetooth and it will lock or unlock.
We've seen a similar trick with the Kwikset KEVO, but not on a retrofit lock Other specs, this runs on four double a batteries.
At its high performance mode, those batteries will last about 12 months.
But you can turn down to a lower mode if you want your lock to go slower, if the batteries to last longer.
So basically when you install the lock, the two screws in the Shepherd lock itself Send a small electrical signal to the retrofit deadbolt.
It's at a micro amp level, so apparently very safe, and that little bit of electricity allows it to use This double to tell specifically when you're touching it and then again the Bluetooth range in your fall lets you know that you're there it senses you touching it unlocks the bull or use those same sensors to know that something is awry it's.
If someone's trying to pick your life, you can share key access via the app.
So you can have guests come in and out and revoke the access when they don't need it anymore.
You'll see a record of who's opening the door when.
So that's all pretty darn impressive, especially because of the fact that again, it's retrofitting.
So you can use your existing deadbolt, you can replace what's on here only with just a couple of screws and a screwdriver and boom, you have a smart lock.
That is really pretty smart.
So this debuted with a prototype at last CES.
It's here again but it's fully production ready.
It's launching this March after a successful Kickstarter, and you'll be able to buy it for 250 bucks.
Again, I'm walking around.
I'm seeing a lot of different smart locks, but this one might stand out from a little start up called Passive Bolt.
This separate lock could have what it takes to stand out from an increasingly competitive crowd I'm excited to see what I can do once it launches in March and we get to test it out.
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