Paul,

thanks for jumping in.

1) I wasn't misled by PS-POLL. I used 2mA as a conservative estimate. I know you can get a lot worse. That's why I think instant WiFi unlocking isn't/wasn't realistic.

A lot of your users expected and expect instant WiFi unlocking. You even advertise using NFC tags for unlocking which would work through the phone and over WiFi! I don't think the limitations of WiFi have been made clear to mainstream, non technical users. Based on what criteria does lockitron enter power saving mode?

You linked to a blog post on May 2nd of 2014. It clearly says that unlocking via WiFi for instantaneous entry isn't practical. You guys should probably make the distinction clear on your main page as well and your video. That's where people buying your products go.

EDIT: Here is a review from one your backers I just came across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmn6A7HStH4

2) My understanding is that you also do this through who was closest when the thumbturn is turned. I know there are others doing BLE proximity unlocking as well but Kevo for example uses two radios (and they took out a patent on this), and even their customers aren't happy with the results (as you yourself have pointed out on Lockitron community website)

The link you post to says one can set lockitron for different modes (passageway, etc). I'm talking about using it in the front door of my house, or an apartment and not getting confused on who comes in and who goes out.

Also, whether the problem is with Android API, or Apple API, or whatever else, the point is you advertised a feature before having tested that it would work. Good advice is to not do that.

Finally the other companies you linked to are Nest and Dropcam and in both scenarios they don't really care EXACTLY where you are. They care that you are WITHIN RANGE. To unlock my door properly you NEED to know that I am on the CORRECT SIDE OF THE DOOR and that I actually want to unlock it, not that I am standing near the door chatting with a door knocker, sitting on my porch, or working on the flower bed near the porch. Yes I actually have a bed of flowers right by the door and sometimes I work on them.

3) I am talking about two different things here: The mechanical portion that turns the thumbturn and all the logic, API, signals that go into deciding to turn it or not. You guys obviously have problems with both. It would have been wise to solve the problems separately at least at fist before taking a dime from someone, but that's just my personal opinion.

You can later build a manufacturing prototype that combines both.

I disagree with your approach to product development, but that's just based on my personal experience. The goal is to minimize the COST of things when they go wrong so you start with deal breakers first -- battery life, etc. then you move it down to things that you can fix with firmware update. As for things like doing Diffie-Hellman, here is a tip: You can always use rotating PSK to encrypt communication, and initial code can be set using Diffie-Hellman or whatever else you'd like.

Furthermore Bluetooth security hasn't been safe since 2.0.

Also BLE chips don't do much beyond minimum stack. The rest would be in your firmware or whoever wrote the firmware for you. The comment about the chip moving from signed licenses to unsigned ones doesn't make a lot of sense to me but I could be wrong.

4) I was being conservative, but even at 40 hours someone could tell you the FUNDAMENTAL problems with your approach. It is a quick sanity check before you walk down a path.

While I'm sure your current device costs more than $30 to build as you say, I don't believe a properly designed one in high volumes would. I've designed quite a few WiFi based products, and a few electro-mechnical products.

5) I know lockitron goes OVER an existing lock but you have a mechanical component that is driven by motor and turns left or right. This is very, very similar to all other motor driven locks in this aspect. How the movement is transferred to the lock -- via thumbturn or via the main shaft in the case of an actual deadbolt -- is mostly a function of the shape of the piece that mates to the output shaft. It doesn't need different gear configurations to turn the actual deadbolt shaft than to turn the thumbturn.

Also this was in response to Cameron asserting that everything had to be custom designed. I disagree. There are many, many other products that use a motor to turn something. I'm sure a lot of that can be referred to for inspiration or certainly reused in terms of basic gears.

And about gear vendors you say that getting gears ready made from them shifts the cost of tooling elsewhere... where? They give you gears that are ready to use. I've bought gears from a number of vendors and customized them too. They charge you NRE, and give you the gears at the promised time. They cost a few cents a piece. You can evaluate the quality of their gears by looking at the existing gears they make. A TON of products use gears and motors, even cheap plastic toys too. Buying and getting gears is fairly common, like screws and springs; 90% of time you stick with existing catalogue.

6) The spec defines the torque required for the thumbturn. You can certainly add a safety margin as I suggested but it gives you a minimum floor. Clearly this minimum floor wasn't established properly. After all human hands turn these deadbolts with relatively the same force.

Comparing requirements of a standard to features of another standard (BLE 4.0/4.1) is not the proper comparison. Your analogy would be valid if Android BLE operated on 2.6GHz while BLE spec says 2.4.