While using a smart lock has a lot of positives, one of the negatives is having to deal with a battery that has unexpectedly gone dead. Lockin is introducing a smart lock that bypasses that problem: the V7 Max, which is powered by wireless optical charging. According to the company, the lock uses “eye-safe optical output to provide rapid power delivery with zero waste within a four-meter range.”
This is how it works, according to Lockin: The smart lock’s lithium battery is wirelessly charged by a transmitter, call an AuraCharge, which is plugged into an outlet and installed inside the house within 4 meters of the lock (you can mount the AuraCharge to the wall or place it on a table or other surface). Lockin says that if the transmitter is stopped for any reason, the lock will still work for several hours. It may be worth mentioning that most smart locks have battery life that’s measured in months.
Designed by Hartmut Esslinger, Apple’s former chief designer, the V7 Max offers three options for biometric unlocking: finger vein, palm vein, and 3D facial recognition. As a result, it looks nothing like the usual smart locks with their square style and number pads. Instead, it resembles a gracefully curved door handle..
The V7 Max has a built-in video doorbell, features five-inch touchscreens both inside and out, and is compatible with the Matter protocol, allowing it to work with Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung smart home systems. It uses two outer cameras, along with an AI system called LockinAI, which the company says can do everything from recognizing and logging deliveries, to monitoring children and elderly people for safety issues, to creating automatic highlight reels of family celebrations. (Many of the claimed AI features would seem to require an inward-facing camera, but none of the materials The Verge had received by embargo time mentioned one.)
And this is not the only wirelessly charged smart lock the company is announcing. It is also releasing an update to its Veno Pro deadbolt smart lock, called the Veno Pro Wireless, which will be equipped with the same technology as the V7 Max.
This is the second type of wireless charging technology for smart locks we’ve seen; the first, the Alfred DB2S smart lock, uses an infrared laser to keep its battery topped off. It’s not yet clear how similar Lockin’s AuraCharge technology is to the Wi-Charge system used by Alfred.
Lockin’s V7 Max will be available for preorder this month and is expected to ship sometime early this year. No price was available at press time.
