Since I set up my credit card on my mobile phone, I have often gone out into the street with only my identity card in my pocket, however, there was another problem that stained this attempt at minimalism, and it was none other than the house keys.
How to open the street door remotely
House keys are something that I have long seen as an outdated element that affects my digital life, but luckily, the arrival of electronic locks has helped improve this aspect by far. In previous articles published in The Output I have been able to tell you about my experience with the Nuki smart lock , a tremendously practical accessory that allows me to have total control of access to the home.
But as you will surely be thinking, there is no point in having control of the front door if you do not have control of the external access door, and that is where the Nuki Opener comes into play. And it is that in places like Spain, the majority of houses meet on floors of several floors, where in addition to the door of the house, there is a second main access door to the building itself.
Easy installation
This Nuki accessory is responsible for offering connectivity to the building’s telephone or intercom, ending the complications of taking remote control of your home in the event of a visit or possible delivery of the courier service. The idea of offering Bluetooth to your phone may sound like science fiction, but the truth is that its installation is quite simple. The software will ask us about the model of the telephone, and immediately afterwards it will indicate which cables we must connect and bridge so that everything works perfectly. Once installed, we will only have to do the relevant tests to verify that everything is running, and voila, we will have a new Opener running.
Really, don’t be afraid of the cables in the photo. From the product page you can check if your intercom is compatible, and the list of devices is incredibly long, so you probably won’t have any problem configuring yours.
The device has a triple A battery to operate, so it does not depend on any type of external power source that can be sabotaged.
The advantages of opening remotely
If you are wondering what kind of uses could be given to this device, there are actually several, especially if we target it to a business or a shared property:
- We can open the door from the mobile.
- Open the door to someone remotely.
- Set the door to automatically open by ringing the bell when we are nearby.
- Cancel the bell so it doesn’t bother us.
- Schedule the door to always open automatically at the push of a button.
It is important to mention that to have remote control of the Opener, we need to have another accessory, the Bridge, a gateway that will be in charge of establishing a connection with your router so that the Opener is visible from the street. Something completely necessary if you want to enter the house without keys, of course.
The drawbacks to consider
The Opener is a fantastic accessory, but it is not perfect. In our tests we have been able to verify that it lacks some functions that would improve the experience, but we imagine that without limitations caused by the tremendous compatibility it offers. We obviously talk about being able to establish a two-way conversation with the caller, and that is that the Opener will only send us a notification that there has been a knock on the door, being able to choose whether to open or not.
So how do we know who is calling? There is the problem. With the Nuki Opener we do not have any information about who is called, so we would have to combine the device with some smart camera. Taking into account that the access to which we give way is part of a community block, the responsibilities of opening the door to a stranger multiply, so it would be quite interesting to be able to speak to the other person on the other end of the phone.
It does not matter if the intercom of your block has a video intercom or another camera vision system, the Opener will only receive the call press notification and will notify you. Whether or not to open the door will be on your side.
A very useful accessory
This Nuki Opener is basically the option that those users who are fully involved in the domotization of their home need, and that is that in addition to having an intelligent lock, they need to control a second access door. Therefore, we believe that it is an indispensable accessory if you are looking to have access control at home. With a price of 99 euros , it seems to us a highly recommended product to take into account, although you should take into account the purchase of the Bridge as an almost indispensable accessory to take full advantage of its features.
