Remote programable door lock?

[Jeff d]

I have a freind with a house in the mountains that he rents out but he only visits it a few times throughout the year. We're looking at ways to make his life easier through automation. I'm looking at insteon equipment to give him the ability to control the thermostat, lighting and water supply over the internet and that all seems pretty straight forward. What would be great would be if there was a relatively simple way to give him the ability to remotely create access codes that he could give out to the renters.

The way I envision it working would be when he gets a call that someone is going to be renting his house he can jump on to a web interface, create an access code for that renter and set an expiration time/date. When the renter arrives they'd enter the code on a keypad which would unlock the door. They could continue to use that code to enter the house until the code expires without keys ever changing hands.

The "expiration" feature isn't required but would be nice.

What would be the easiest way of accomplishing this?

Also, we're looking at doing automation, exterior security cameras/DVR, and possibly an alarm system and manage them all through a web interface. I know how to handle each of those tasks individually (Each having its own interface) but should I be looking harder at integrating them all into a single system? Would I get better/worse performance by keeping them together or separate. I've seen some software that claims to handle it all but the reviews don't seem that great and I'd be introducing the PC as a major point of failure. This isn't going to be a system that he wants to tinker with. Once it's setup it will have to function reliably for the foreseeable future.

 

[euphline]

I have a freind with a house in the mountains that he rents out but he only visits it a few times throughout the year. We're looking at ways to make his life easier through automation. I'm looking at insteon equipment to give him the ability to control the thermostat, lighting and water supply over the internet and that all seems pretty straight forward. What would be great would be if there was a relatively simple way to give him the ability to remotely create access codes that he could give out to the renters.

HID makes a stand-alone, web-enabled door controller, the EdgePlus Solo ES400 83000:

http://www.hidcorp.com/prod_detail.php?prod_id=129

You would pair it with a keypad / reader and go from there. You would want to review all of the docs to confirm that it supports use of a PIN in absence of a prox card.

If you have basic programming skills, you could probably write something pretty quickly, pairing a NSLU2 with, say, a USB-serial converter and a serial I/O board w/ on-board relay.

-jbn

 

[wuench]

Make sure the rental agency he is using would be willing to work with such a system. I rented a vacation home for a while and my agency insisted on using a key for accountability. They weren't prepared for a high tech solution. I did have a coded lock (kwikset) which worked great for friends and family though.

If you are prepared to go down the security road then the M1 would be the way to go IMHO. You can use the the input and output built into the keypads for the access control paired with a prox card, outdoor keypad, etc, and door lock. Then you can enable/disable proxcards remotely. The prox card solution would give you a "key" to turn in if the rental agency requires accountability.

I would stay away from PC's if at all possible due to the lack of reliability, and potential for theft. Just be careful not to go too overboard, this is just a rental after all. One of the biggest lessons I learned about owning a rental property is that you can't be too attached to the place or any of it's contents. You would be amazed at the stupid tricks and crap that renters pull.

 

[gcimmino]

I second wuench's info, particularly about NOT using a PC.

When we were outfitting our 2nd home apartment in the midwest, we wanted to be able to support the same rental scenario.

The resultant solution was a M1 with thermostats interfaced via the XSP, a mag door strike and an external wiegand keypad hooked up to the prox reader interface of the M1KP for folks to gain access.

You can substitute a prox card reader for the external keypad if you want physical cards for the rental agency to give out, or keep the keypad and remotely add/remove user codes. I preferred NOT having something physical to keep track of and the ability to quickly grant access without having to deliver a card.

I put up a page with the keypad info and a tool to convert the keypad codes to the value you need program in the Elk User definition here.

You can do most everything over a standard phone with the voice interface, but we opted to go with the XEP.

Another "remote location" trick that I used is to have the power for the router and DSL modem on automation controls so we can dial into the M1's voice interface and run a task to power cycle the router and DSL modem in the off chance they go wacky.