I don’t like keys. They catch, scrape, they’re the bane of mobile phone screens, and are generally just a pain to carry around. So I do what I can to keep them off my increasingly misnamed keychain, and I’m not alone. It used to be that most folks had at least three keys: work, car, and home. Nowadays more and more people use wireless badges at work and keyless entry and ignition systems in their car, but the house key is unditchable.
I’m proud to say that Electric Imp is hastening the demise of the ‘third key’ by providing Internet connectivity to Apigy’s Lockitron, a smartphone controlled door lock and control device for the home, and one of the first consumer devices to rely on our technology. Today, they’re announcing on their blog that they’ve picked Electric Imp to make their consumer experience as seamless as can be.
With connectivity provided by Electric Imp’s groundbreaking wireless hardware and cloud service, Lockitron can send notifications and be controlled by Internet-connected devices, and can be linked to a variety of other services for additional functionality. Electric Imp’s unique technology enables Lockitron to send notifications when a door is opened or closed, be locked or unlocked remotely, and enables you to provide access to people you trust no matter where on the planet you are. And with Lockitron’s API you can further customize security for you and your home’s needs.
Excited as several of us at Electric Imp are to lose our house keys, we also love how Apigy brought the Lockitron to life. Last October, Apigy raised more than $2 million in Lockitron pre-orders via a completely home-grown crowdfunding campaign.
As the Lockitron design came together, Apigy found themselves looking for a WiFi solution that would allow them to concentrate on the functionality their users wanted and not on the complexity of building a network device – and they found exactly what they were looking for with Electric Imp.
“When we were selecting which WiFi module we wanted to use in Lockitron, we tested a number of parts and found that the total product Electric Imp offered went far beyond silicon,” says Cameron Robertson, Apigy co-founder. “We strive for simplicity in every aspect of Lockitron, and Electric Imp’s BlinkUp takes a notoriously difficult WiFi enrollment process and turns it into something simple and delightful. Electric Imp was incredibly straightforward to integrate, and we didn’t need to worry about buying expensive toolkits to write our firmware.”
Empowering product developers and manufacturers of any size to quickly and reliably bring their Internet-connected dreams to market is what Electric Imp does best. We get more excited with every new vendor and product announcement, and look forward to sharing them with you.
So go pre-order your Lockitron today and say goodbye to another key. Your phone, and your friends, will thank you for it.
Kevin Fox
Co-Founder and Director of User Experience
Things are really heating up at Electric Imp. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to stay up-to-date on product and company announcements, or subscribe to our newsletter. And did we mention we’re hiring?