Alexa’s New Lock Skill: Yea Or Nay?

August 1, 2016 • Devin Partida

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We’ve all done it. You walk to the front door in the morning only to find it unlocked. Anyone, welcome or not, might have paid you a visit in the night. Thankfully, these situations are usually consequence-free. But what if a smart-home feature could eliminate the chances of this situation altogether? Meet Alexa.

Much of the smart home technology to date can tune a radio or control the lighting in your home. Manufacturers have been apprehensive to move into the high-stakes world of security for understandable reasons.

Now, you can choose to equip your smart home with door locks that are integrated into the internet of things. Recently, Amazon has added the ability to control these devices to its wireless radio and digital assistant Alexa. The voice-operated device gains the ‘skill’ to operate smart locks made by market frontrunner August much in the way you’d install an app on your phone.

Alexa & August

But just how convenient is the Amazon/August smart lock technology? Will it prove a convenient and time-saving boon to your productivity, or wind up locking you out of your own house or potentially worse?

Looking at the out-of-the box offering from August (what you get without Alexa), the lock operates using Bluetooth and is designed to pair with your iPhone or Android. The iPhone app offers the auto-unlock feature, which is handy because it allows you to program your August lock to unlock when you approach.

The August doesn’t have to be used as part of a smart home “system” so you don’t get the ability to pre-program settings like a night mode that locks all doors, because you might purchase only a single lock. That being said, the latest versions of the lock do ship with Apple Home Kit, which allows this type of programmability.

Everyday Use

Once the August skill is installed on your Alexa unit, you can use the voice commands “Alexa, tell August to lock the door,” or “Alexa, tell August to check the status of the front door”, which will report whether the door is locked. The “tell August to” leader must be used to call up Alexa’s skill functionality, since the device doesn’t have integrated functionality for this type of task.

At the moment there isn’t an unlock feature. Alexa doesn’t differentiate between users, so the feature could be taken advantage of to gain access to someone’s home. August and Amazon are working on a means of making this function secure, for instance by adding a numeric passcode.

We don’t see the August smart lock feature selling a lot of Alexa units. The ability to lock a door or check on it, with no locking feature and the other potential risks of a smart lock (what if it breaks?) are likely not enough to convince someone to go out and buy this product, it’s most likely something that existing owners might see as a perk.

august and alexa

How Functional Is It?

There are some cases where we can see the Alexa integration as an added convenience. For example, if someone with limited mobility wants to keep tabs on their door’s security, the Alexa feature is perfect.

But for most homeowners, there’s just not enough added productivity that a really well thought-out smart home system should add.

Consider that the August unit already ships with the auto-lock feature for iOS. Apple Home Kit also adds significant features on top of Alexa’s paltry two. The August integration skill really looks like a hand-out to Android users who feel like they missed the boat.

There is hope that Amazon can ditch the “tell August to” lingo and deliver a more robust feature set. An August/Alexa setup could ask Alexa for “goodnight mode” and have all the locks on the house engage. That’s delivering a noticeable increase in productivity.

Limitations

However, the current feature set falls short of impressive. Can you imagine arriving home, unlocking the door manually because you’re not an iPhone user, and then asking Alexa to lock the door only to be shut down in that cold, digital voice? Walking back to the door to lock it is the opposite of increased productivity.

None of the problems with this system are died-in-the-wool. Amazon & August are likely working to make the Alexa unit into a more robust smart-home instead of a glorified radio.

For now, those who want a baked-in security setup from a smart lock are better off with Apple Home Kit.

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