These are the questions Pelham Bay owners and shopkeepers ask once the lock is chosen and they start thinking about living with it. They are grouped by what they are really about. Price, booking and practical housekeeping questions are in the FAQ further down.
Alerts, schedules and the working day
Our phones buzz every time anyone opens the door — can the lock tell us only about the openings that matter?
Yes, and it is the first thing we change for commuting households. Most lock apps let you choose notifications per user and per event rather than all or nothing. A sensible set for a house that is empty all day is: an alert when a particular user arrives (a child home from school), an alert when any code is used outside its schedule, an alert for repeated wrong codes or tampering, an alert if a door stays open longer than a few minutes, and a low-battery warning. Everything else — your own comings and goings, the grandparent who drops by — goes quietly into the log.
Some apps also offer a daily summary, or let you see the whole day’s history in one list. Where yours does not, a two-minute look at the log on the ride home does the same job. What you should not do is leave every alert on and train yourself to ignore them; the one that matters will arrive in a pile of ones that do not.
Our cleaner’s Tuesday code started and stopped an hour off after the clocks changed — why would that happen?
Scheduled codes run on the lock’s own clock, and that clock is set by the app, a bridge or a hub when the lock connects. If the lock’s time zone was never set correctly, or the lock has not synced since daylight saving time began or ended, its idea of “9 a.m.” can be an hour away from yours. A lock that has been offline for weeks can drift for the same reason.
The fix is usually simple: open the lock settings, confirm the time zone is Eastern, and let the lock sync through its bridge or your phone. We set and check the time zone at handover and note it on the handover card. If schedules keep drifting after that, the lock is losing its connection, which is a signal problem worth fixing for its own sake.
Our children’s after-school code is set for weekdays — what happens on snow days and school holidays?
A weekday schedule does not know the school calendar. On a snow day or a holiday the children’s code still works from the start of its window, which is usually fine, but it may not work outside it, which is not. If your children’s code runs only from 2:30 to 6 on weekdays, a child at home on a snow day who steps out to a friend’s house at noon could be locked out on return.
There are three ways round it. Give children an unscheduled code or fingerprint and rely on arrival alerts instead of time windows; widen the window to cover the school day, accepting a little less restriction; or keep the schedule and plan to change it from the app on the morning of a closure. Most families with children at PS 71 or PS 14 end up choosing the first, because a locked-out child is a bigger problem than a code that works at lunchtime.
We spend several weeks a year with family abroad — can we add and delete codes from overseas, or only on our home network?
If the lock is reachable over the internet — a Wi-Fi lock, a lock with a Wi-Fi bridge, or a Matter lock with a border router at home — you can manage codes from anywhere your phone has data. The phone talks to the maker’s service or to your home hub, which passes the change to the lock. A Bluetooth-only lock with no bridge can be changed only by someone standing near the door.
Before a long trip, check two things: that the lock shows as online in the app away from your home Wi-Fi (switch your phone to mobile data at the curb and try it), and that someone nearby holds a mechanical key in case the lock goes offline while you are away. We test both at handover for any household that tells us it travels.
Security questions people actually ask
Could someone standing outside with a radio gadget trick a smart lock into opening?
The real-world risk sits mainly with “hands-free” or “auto-unlock” features that open the door because your phone or fob is nearby. In May 2022 the security firm NCC Group published a Bluetooth Low Energy relay attack: equipment that forwards the radio conversation between a phone and a lock so the lock believes the phone is next to it. NCC reported successful exploits against a Tesla Model 3 and Y and against the Kwikset/Weiser Kevo smart lock, and said the problem was not an ordinary bug a patch could fix.
Its advice for users was to switch off passive unlock features that do not require an explicit action, such as tapping a button in the app. That is our default too. On a Pelham Bay house that sits empty all day we leave proximity auto-unlock off unless you specifically want it, and rely on codes, fingerprints or a deliberate tap in the app. Keypad codes and fingerprints are not affected by a relay of this kind.
The whole family logs in to the lock app with one shared email and password — what is wrong with that?
Three things. Anyone who knows that password has full control of the door, including the ability to delete everyone else’s access. The log cannot tell you which family member made a change, because they all appear as the same account. And if the password leaks from some other site where it was reused, a stranger has your front door.
The better arrangement is one owner account with two-factor sign-in turned on, a second full administrator on a different person’s phone so you are never locked out of the settings, and everyone else invited as an ordinary user or given a code. We move households onto that arrangement at installation, and when we take over an existing lock we start by changing the shared password.
The keypad locks when anyone touches the logo — could a passer-by or a child lock someone out by mistake?
Many keypad deadbolts have a one-touch locking feature: tap the logo or a lock button outside and the bolt throws. It is convenient when you leave in a hurry for the train. It also means anyone at the door can lock it, which matters on a house where a relative inside has no key and no code, or on a door where a child plays on the stoop.
Locking someone in is not a risk, because the inside thumb-turn always opens the lock. Locking someone out is. If anyone in the house regularly steps outside without a code or phone, either give them a code or turn one-touch locking off and rely on auto-lock with a short delay instead. We go through this setting at handover rather than leaving it at the factory default.
At night we would like the door to stay shut even to someone who has a valid code — is that possible?
Many smart deadbolts have a privacy, vacation or “lock-out” mode, set from the inside or the app, that disables keypad codes until it is turned off. It suits a household that gives out several visitor codes during the day and wants none of them to work overnight, or a family going away that wants every code silenced at once rather than deleted one by one.
Two cautions. Check whether the mode also blocks the mechanical key or the app on your model, because some do and some do not. And make sure everyone who might come home late knows it may be on. Schedules can do much the same job automatically by ending every visitor code at a set hour, which is often the simpler choice.
Phones, deliveries and records
Our family is half iPhone and half Android — will one lock work well for everyone?
Usually, but it decides which lock you should buy. Brand apps such as those from the big lock makers run on both iPhone and Android, so anyone can be invited as a user. The friction comes with phone-wallet keys and home platforms: Apple’s home key works only on Apple devices, and a lock set up only in Apple Home or only in Google Home leaves the other half of the family on the outside.
A Matter lock can be shared with more than one ecosystem at once, so an iPhone household member and an Android one can both see it in their own app, though not every feature appears in every app. For a mixed household we usually keep the lock maker’s app as the main control, add Matter or a platform for convenience, and make sure nobody depends on a phone-only feature for getting in.
Should we sign up for one of the delivery programs that let a courier open the garage while we are at work?
It depends on what is behind the garage door. Amazon’s Key In-Garage Delivery, for instance, works with a compatible smart garage opener: when the driver arrives they scan the package, Amazon checks the package and the driver’s location, the linked garage opens, the parcel goes inside and the door closes, with notifications at each step and an optional camera to watch. For a Pelham Bay house with a detached garage at the back of the lot and nothing valuable inside, that can end parcels left on the stoop.
Where the garage is tucked under the house with a door up into the living space, the garage is really part of the house. In that case the door between the garage and the house should be locked by its own smart deadbolt whenever the household is out, and set to relock if it is opened, so a delivery program can never become a way into the kitchen.
Can the lock’s entry history line up with our camera recordings so we can see who used each code?
Yes, if both systems keep the right time. The lock log records which user unlocked at what minute; the camera records what happened at the door. If both clocks are correct, finding the clip that matches a log entry takes seconds. Some platforms join the two automatically, showing the code user beside the video event; others need you to look the time up in each app.
For shops on Westchester and Crosby avenues this is often the main reason to go keyless: a dispute about who opened up late, or who was in the back after closing, is settled by the log and the footage together. We set both clocks, test the match at handover and, where the camera system supports it, link the lock so its events appear on the recording timeline.
Delivery riders collect orders at our restaurant’s side door all evening — should they get a code, or should the door stay staffed?
Keep riders out of the code list. Riders change from night to night and work for several platforms, so any code they hold is effectively public within a week, and a door they can open is a door into your kitchen and stockroom. The workable pattern is a side door that stays locked from outside, with staff opening it from inside when a rider knocks or rings, and a shelf or pass-through just inside for bagged orders.
Staff themselves can have their own codes for the same door, scheduled to their shifts, so the log shows who let deliveries out on a given night. If the volume justifies it, a video doorbell or intercom at the side door lets the person at the counter see the rider before opening. The inside of the door must always open freely for anyone leaving.
Does a smart lock add anything to what a Pelham Bay house appraises for?
We have not found any published data showing that a smart lock changes an appraisal in this neighborhood, and we would not suggest buying one for that reason. Appraisals here turn on the house, the lot, the condition and the sales around it. A lock is a small fixture by comparison and a buyer may well replace it.
What a smart lock does do at sale time is make the handover cleaner: you can delete every code, give the buyer the administrator role or factory-reset the lock, and hand over the mechanical keys, so the new owner starts with a door nobody else can open. If you are planning to sell soon, choose a mainstream model with long app support rather than a niche one a buyer may not recognize.
