Deadbolt still work with a lockkill key?

[jaime_lion]

Basically she has not carried her key for her house with her for the last 3 months and she has no "hide-a-key" or anything like that around her house. So if the smart lock failed she would be calling a locksmith anyway. Would it be relatively easy to screw a piece of metal over the lock?

I would just like to add a word of caution. 3 months is not a long time when it comes to these electronic locks. As the lock get's older, things like the motor begin to wear out. There are likely to be issues that creep up throughout the life of this product.

In regards to your question about screwing a piece of metal over the lock, it would depend on what you mean. It seems like it would be very simple to screw a metal housing into your door to cover the exterior lock hardware, but I am not sure how effective it would be as a security measure or what it would offer to the lock owner. Maybe I am missing something about your intent.

I was thinking she could have a piece of metal like aluminum or such screwed over the key way into the metal of the deadbolt. Would this work? do they make any kind of caps that you can crimp on for keyways and such?

[billdeserthills]

A dummy cylinder

[tjohn]

I would suggest not wasting your time trying to over engineer a solution and just break a kill key off in there, or glue, or whatever

[demux]

A strong second to what a couple of other people have said. If your friend is considering killing the cylinder on her deadbolt because she thinks the electronic lock is more secure, she may be right. However rather than killing it, I'd suggest she consider upgrading it to one to match the security of the electronics. If the model she has is the same I'm finding on Google, then it looks to be compatible with just about any deadbolt, and it looks like she's already dropped at least $150 on the smart lock. Decent deadbolts with reasonably difficult to pick cylinders (read: something that will make an average thief move on to her neighbor's instead) can be had in that price range or less, but not from most big box stores, she'll need to go see a real locksmith and explain her situation. Or look around this forum a bit, there are several threads here dealing with just that type of thing. If she doesn't want to carry the key, she can leave it with a trusted friend, hide it in a keybox, etc.

Having worked with electronics for some time, I just don't trust them in a pinch. There are just too many failure modes. For reliability, nothing beats the peace of mind of having a physical key to insert into a physical lock, even if only as a backup entry method.

Another thing to consider, in addition to the worn motors or dead batteries that others have mentioned. If you have an internet enabled smart lock on your home (which looks like the type you're discussing here), and you didn't write all the code for the lock itself and the smartphone app yourself, build and maintain the server yourself, do any required wiring or network connections yourself, design and build all the security yourself, then the lock isn't really yours and you don't really control its opening and closing - the company that sold it to you does, and it's really only by their largesse that you are able to enter your home (or that other people aren't). What happens if that company suddenly goes out of business, decides it doesn't want to support your model anymore, etc? Don't think it can happen? Check out the story of Revolv at https://arlogilbert.com/the-time-that-t ... 0941c762c1.