Biometrics

We have all been there. We get home from a long day. The kids have their backpacks and soda bottles, and your arms are full of fast food bags for a quick dinner. The keys are looped around your finger, where you put them before grabbing all the bags without thinking about how you were going to get the door open. Now you have to try to get the key without dropping anything, which does not work too well, and you drop everything just to get the door unlocked.

Those days are now over. Biometric fingerprint door locks are no longer the lock of choice for cool rock stars and models, or over paid corporate executives. Biometric fingerprint door locks are now available to the public sector, and at prices that most families who need the security can afford.

The first biometric fingerprint door locks were not very reliable, and very expensive. One of the major problems with the door locks was that the fingerprint reader was completely unreliable. Fingerprints were hard to program, rarely recognized on the first try, if at all. The key pads were too small to be of real use, with no lighting to help out in the dark. And the use of the mechanical key for every entry defeated the purpose of the biometric lock. Additionally, batteries did not last that long, and there was no back up power source.

The new biometric fingerprint door locks are much more reliable. Besides being much easier to program, the new fingerprint readers often read and recognize the fingerprint correctly on the first try. The key pad entry is much easier to handle, with LCD lights to help out during night time entries. The biometric fingerprint door locks still take four double a batteries, but they typically last about one year with daily use.

Also, like a smoke detector, the biometric fingerprint door locks chirp audibly when the batteries begin to run low. If the batteries do die, there is a back up nine volt battery to power the device. The fingerprint memory is on a different battery, so that you don't have to worry about losing the fingerprints in memory and reprogramming when you change the batteries.

Biometric fingerprint door locks are a great way to protect your home from theft. While there are ways to get around the door locks, it would take a knowledgeable thief with the ability to hack into a computer system to break into your home. Average thugs and thieves will be unable to penetrate the system. The mechanical keys for normal entry cannot be duplicated, and the lock cannot be easily picked like most door locks.

The biometric fingerprint door locks come in three types. There are spring locks, as are found on most inside doors. There are also dead bolt locks for use on outer doors. Additionally, but less common, are the locks for the mortise latch, which is used primarily in commercial buildings.