Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
When we talk about the smart home, we often talk about grand visions of perfectly automated everything. You know the ones: you wake up perfectly rested thanks to some bedside light thing, and as you stretch luxuriously toward the ceiling, a sensor notices and turns on the coffee pot, starts steaming the sauna, and starts playing a curated playlist of all your favorite songs. It sounds nice! It is… mostly not how the smart home actually works.
But you know what does work, and is pretty smart? Swapping out the lock on your front door for something that lets you enter with a code or a fingerprint, or even just knows when you’re nearby and opens right up. In recent months, we’ve seen a slew of smart locks, along with some new video…