Door Locks - New Work Space

Software/Technology
#1

Hi all. I did a search and do not see anything that is fairly recent. Finishing out a small 1-story stand-alone building with approximately 20 offices, 1 meeting room, and three outdoor entrances. This is a 4-7 year use for the building, so trying to keep costs down as all will need new locks.

Any recommendation for individual door locks? Expected office leases will mostly be 1-3 months, so there will be turnover. Any suggestions on what should be looked at? I have nest cameras at my home with schlage outdoor door locks connected through smartthings smart home. My guess is we need something more robust?

#2

We are also about to open a coworking space and I put in quite some time in order to figure out which lock system to install.

Long story short: Although Salto is quite expensive it is still the system which makes most sense.

These are the main criteria I came up with:

  • Integration in coworking software - I don’t want to double the work by having to create and manage different accounts for coworking and wifi. And it get’s worse if you have stuff: You have to train them on 2 systems, you have to make sure they do it right (additional work for you)

  • Battery lifetime: There are cheaper systems but you will have to change batteries every 2-3 months. Make your math about the costs of material and time.

  • Reliability: How long has the manufacturer / system be in the field? What’s the hazzle on your side if a lock fails?

  • What are the additional costs for routers? Some had cheaper locks but more expensive routers/controlers

  • What does the management software look like? One system we were interested in had no option for creating group templates - every user had to be assigned to each door individualy.

So in the end Salto came out more expensive (+30%) at start but with regard to the total costs of ownership it is still the much better choice IMHO.

#3

I would highly recommend the Finnish company iLOQ in your case and specifically their systems S5 or S10. We’ve used iLOQ at our coworking space and cultural hub Blivande in Stockholm for several years and are very pleased with the product so far.

The USP of iLOQ is that they blow all other competitors out of the water in terms of pricing whilst still delivering a robust and easily managed digital access system. They’re able to accomplish this with their patented solution where the electricity required to verify the access right programmed on the RFID-chip of each physical key is generated by the kinetic energy of the same key being inserted into the cylinder.
This means that every cylinder is completely self-sufficient in terms of power and can be inserted in any door without the need for very expensive cable installations or motor locks.

I don’t know where in the world you are but here in Sweden a motor lock + the customized cabling/installation required for each door can cost upwards of 2500 EUR or more per door. With iLOQ you simply pay 300-400 EUR per cylinder and another 20 EUR per reprogrammable key and that’s it aside from a negligible annual license fee. If you’re somewhat handy you can probably do the installation yourself although your insurance company might disagree.

They also offer custom locks such as padlocks, cylinder for lockers and stuff like that. You can buy tiny batteries and insert with the cylinder that lasts for years if you want to retain access logs.

The only real drawback I’ve discovered so far is that their admin software only runs on Windows. I guess it might be possible to make it work through WINE or something like that but I haven’t tried myself so can’t be sure.