Lockitron introduces Bolt, its Next Generation Connected Lock for $99

The lock can be unlocked with one’s smartphone making it very simple yet very secure.

Lockitron had set out to build a new kind of device that could give control to people to share access with family and friends from anywhere in the world. The company started this journey two years ago and in 2012 introduced its new device Lockitron to the world. Finally today the company announced its new and innovative Lockitron Bolt which is basically the successor to the crowd funded Lockitron. 

What will this new device bring to the world? The Bolt is smaller, robust and more elegant than the previously crowd funded Lockitron. Bolt has a much better battery life, more fault tolerant embedded architecture and includes Lockitron’s most popular and liked features such as the sharing access, Sense and activity logging.  

The company’s shipment reached to its 10,000th backer but the company needed significant changes to their existing suppliers in order to make their way through the immense backlog. So the company decided to reach out to their backers in order to get feedback, from which some of them had received the device while other still waited for it.

After this reach out and getting more feedback the company came to know that the installation process was quick for most of the backers but it had its flaws. These issues were cited in calibration and alignment. Moreover most of the backers wanted the ability to share access, concrete shipping timeliness along with Sense auto locking and most importantly they wanted a robust Lockitron that could function reliably every single time. 

So the company decided to focus on the solution that would get all of their backers the highest quality product as soon as possible and so the company began work on its new device the Lockitron Bolt. This new device has been based on a tested locking mechanism that has will see millions of cycles across thousands of doors. The device will be manufactured in a facility that is already renowned and has the ability to ship tens of thousands of units per year.

Just like the previous device the Lockitron Bolt has also been equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy. The company has also broken out Lockitron’s Wi-Fi capability into a separate unit that is being called Bridge. This will basically give you always-on remote control from anywhere in the world without draining the batteries. 

The company has decided that this time around the new device will be shipped in two different editions. The first edition will be a Preview edition which will be shipped in March. This edition will also be based on the same mechanical hardware as the final version of Bolt. The Bolt preview will be an open beta which the company has planned to limit to a few thousand units. The company has already produced the mechanical components for the first 1000 Bolt Preview units. It seems that this new locking device will become the new norm once it is introduced in the market.