Actually useful home automation

David (drbh) Holtz
14 min readJul 27, 2020

We’ve all done it. We’ve all asked ourselves the question “did I remember to lock the door?”

I’m not sure if I have some light diagnosis of OCD or if my short term memory is exceptionally short — but I find myself checking if the door is locked multiple times a day.

With all of this extra time at home due to quarantine, I thought this would be a good problem to tackle as this weekend's project.

The end of this journey

Background

My girlfriend and I live in a post-war 1941 low rise 42 unit 6 story apartment building.

Brooklyn is covered with postwar buildings and as a local real estate agent explains:

I tell clients that post-wars are the Honda Accord of New York apartments … It’s a solid, no-fuss, no-muss, easy thing, with great locations at comparatively low prices — Gus Waite

I agree with Gus and can attest to all of those points! However, one drawback of these building are its worn features; as any, ~80-year-old structure would have.

One of these features is the building's choice of lock. A jimmy-proof deadbolt lock.

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