Saw some Keyless Entry locks at one of the Big Box stores yesterday.
It SEEMS pretty slick, but ‘seeming’ and ‘reality’ are often not in the same universe. Thought I’d swing by here and see what is the scuttle on it.
So chime in with your praise or stories of woe!
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Replies
From a statastician's viewpoint, most of the numeric key pad locks are pretty insecure. Even though the keys may be numbered zero through nine or one through ten, they are usually numbered as number pairs (i.e., 1/6, 2/7, 3/8, etc.). This means that there are actually only five "numbers."
The number of possible combinations is the factorial of the number of combinations (i.e., 5x4x3x2x1 = 120. This means that there are only 120 possible combinations. Any potential thief could run through all the combinations in just a few minutes unless there is a lock out for multiple failed attempts. The probability is just half of the combinations since for a population of all possible combinations, the thief is likely to find the right combination in the first half of the population whether he starts at the "bottom" or the "top" of the number combinations.
Consider also that a lockout for multiple attempts could leave your little child standing in the cold just because she or he could not press the right buttons with mittons on.
If there are more "numbers," the possible combinations rises. For example if there are six buttons, the number of combinations that a burgler would need to attempt rises to 720 -- still not a large number if the thief knows that he will not be disturbed for awhile.
Convenient, yes, but for everyone not just your household.
My mom's condo has electroic keypad locks on the main doors. Those have the full 10 digits, and digits can be repeated so for a four digit combo the possible choices are 10^4 = 1,000.
The factorial thing will kick in if they don't rotate combos and the buttons start showing wear...
Nate
10,000 0000-9999
power bolt, love it, $200 Baldwin entry lock froze up in freezing ran, power bolt beside it no problems! great, can go out for a run and don't have to carry any keys ..
Good catch, and I even counted the zeros. Must have started at 0 (computer engineer).
Thanks for the correction
Nate
As always, there's none better than the Breaktime folks for complete answers! Thanks!
Off to the store now.
I haven't carried a house key since 1970. My daughter was surprised people had to have them when she went off to college.
I have the mechanical Simplex lock with the dead bolt.
I would never go back
mechanical Simplex lock
Any person can learn in 10 minutes how to open any simplex in 5 minutes unless it is set for 1/2 key pushes. You can look up the combo tables on the internet and a novice can open one in the time it takes to punch in the 1000 different combos.
Is yours set for at least 1 ea 1/2 push if on your main house - hard for kids to do the 1/2 push though.
I have about 10 simplexs on sheds and outbuildings, and one on a basement door for during the day, and one on the mailbox (got a good deal awhile back on them for $10 ea, normally hundreds $$ ea.. Once you take one apart and 'feel' the way the geared disks rotate, the 5 minute routine in easy.
One source says that about 30% of simplex locks can be opend immediatley as the owners never bothered to change from the 245 default combo - hope you did? .
I use a little more complex combo that 234 ;-)In real life before a guy is going to stand on my front porch and punch in a few hundred combos he will go around back and break a window ... well he probably won't break the windows in the back because they are 150 mph large missile impact rated but you get the idea. I do shuffle the combo occasionally so the buttons get more even wear. Many years ago I had all 5 at once but that was hard to do consistently.BTW the combo that seemed the hardest to hack in the computer room doors I have seen was the single punch "1" because nobody believed it would be that easy.
Have had one installed for about 3 years. Generally, no complaints tho every once in a while -randomly - the bolt mechanism does not retract completely. Have to rekey the combination to finish the job. Does not seem related to freshness of batteries.
Would never be without a key.
On balance, nice convenience.
I've been using keyless systems for many years. I've been very satisfied with them so far.
New knowledge is priceless.
Used knowledge is even more valuable.
We've got one on a ski condo that we rent out. It works ?for us because we don't have to worry about sending keys through the mail and then getting them back. Ours is a Schlage I think with ten buttons. We've been happy with it but we've only had it for a year. How often do we need to change the batteries anyway
Had a Powerbolt for years - works great for kids that can't hang on to keys.
And statistically speaking, the powerbolt has a huge number of combos - 5 digits, up to 8 number code, gives 390,000 combinations. Even a four digit code gives 625 combos.
Only proviso - change the batteries twice a year. If they get weak, locking is chancey.