Some 2020 Installs

Covid hasn’t slowed down the installation of new Smartalock sites across New Zealand and Australia which is promising for what is otherwise an uncertain time for many businesses.

In New Zealand we have just finished with PWC in Commercial Bay, with 900 odd lockers installed over 5 beautiful floors. Users are self allocating and moving their lockers around depending on where they are working. PWC are also using the floorsense system sold by our sister company. The floorsense pucks and occupancy sensors are actually controlled from the Locker controllers, and managed from a single web interface. We had a nice mention in the NZ Herald as well:

“Mark Averill, chief executive and senior partner at PwC New Zealand, said the move would enable the firm to "adapt to new ways of working and ensure the business remains fit for the future".

He said the Auckland workplace would now offer "collaboration and meeting" options of more than 1000 seats across six floors, including "agile" seating areas, quiet work zones and phone booths, with tech-enabled workstation and "experience" centres.

He said one innovation, floorsense, provides an integrated system for finding and booking workplaces from a mobile phone before reaching the office, with "pucks" used to wirelessly charge mobile phones. He said the latter technology would also lend itself to contact tracing and to enact social distancing, as required”

We also have a few other tenancies in the Commercial Bay building to commission Smartalock lockers into over the next few weeks - more on those installs soon!

More Recent Installations

This month has been busy with installations in Australia and NZ, along with extending our first UK site with another 350 doors.

In Auckland, Genesis Energy gets Smartalock Lite for a refreshed fit out that’s looking great - our black faceplates make a good match for woodgrain end panels.

Genesis have now both Hamilton and Auckland sites linked to a single web management system, giving easy locker admin and control from a simple, single smartalock portal interface, hosted fully onsite.

The Floating latch

Never ones to stop thinking about how to do stuff better, we’ve listened to feedback from installers in the field about how to make our product easier to install and maintain.

One thing that came up is - while a jig is useful to quickly mark the position of where the latch should go on a levelled door - when there are thousands of doors to install then the best option is to pre-drill the latch holes in the factory.

But pre-drilling latch holes doesn’t leave much room for error when aligning the latch with the mouth of the lock after levelling doors onsite.

We were always aware of this - our current latch design has about 5mm of tolerance on vertical plane in either direction as does the mouth of the lock, it can be adjusted up and down before screwing in the final screw to align with the lock mouth. That means you can pre-drill 1 of the latch holes, and then manually adjust the latch position and screw in the final screw(s) once the door is level.

But what if you could pre-drill top and bottom latch holes onto doors, fit both locks and latches in the factory knowing that after levelling doors the latch would still open smoothly. Enter the Smartalock floating latch set - which subject to passing some abusive testing - should become our standard latch from November onward.

With the floating latch, the steel staple is sprung to be able to move up and down within the latch enclosure, meaning it always will align with the mouth of the lock, even if its a whopping 14mm out!

Installers can now pretty much eyeball where to screw the latch on and it should still work (not that we recommend doing that!). It also means that subsidence over time of doors, hinges or the whole building shouldn’t result in multiple callouts to fix sticky latches on locker doors.

Our spring has been designed to withstand staying in a fully compressed position for upto 10 years and still bounce back every time. The design also allows for a grub screw to still lock off the final position should the installer want certainty of the latch position.

Another example of how were trying to make your lockers last for longer without any maintenance whatsoever!

University of Auckland

The UoA installation is underway in B401 and B405 with 700+ lockers going in for engineering students to use in their new home. We took the opportunity to also upgrade the kiosk from the original sample locker system installed into the Human Sciences building - looking smart in all black.

The standard Smartalock card reader has been replaced with a Student ID barcode reader. The Smartalock controller is flexible and supports all manner of swipe card, biometric and barcode type readers - including any of the CCID standard or proprietary readers such as HID or Gallagher Bluetooth readers.

Australian Unity

Another successful install of 1400+ doors in Melbourne has been completed by the Smartalock team last month. Australian Unity users are enjoying a beautiful fit out that we thought we would grab some photos of before everyone moves in

End of Trip looking good

Singapore Expansion

Smartalock is live in Singapore with our first installation for Xero’s new fit out in Cross St central city. Users were right into it, keen to understand how the system works and get their smartphones linked up to the lockers.

Xero’s locker design has evolved over time to the current setup with flush mounted touchscreen and card reader, open void for storage at the bottom and a woodgrain full surround to help lockers blend into the wall nicely.

Recent Installations Q4 2018

Q4 has been another busy quarter for our team with the commissioning of several new sites in New Zealand and Australia. Recent jobs include extending AA Insurance to their Hamilton call centre, and Transpower to their Auckland HQ. We are also proud to have commissioned over 1100 doors for Wellington City Council at their new home on the Terrace in Wellington, and another 650+ doors for Xero Auckland.

Most recently we have been busy rolling out 700 doors for Mercury Auckland’s new office in New Market. A very nice site and our polished stainless embedded kiosks look great with a vertical woodgrain finish on the lockers

Embedded Kiosk steel/black on woodgrain

End of Trip lockers for Apple in Auckland - Apple appreciate the use of iPad to control the locker system :)

Australian installs have also been increasing during Q4 2018, with notable systems commissioned for ASIC, Suncorp and Australian Department of Health. Our software team has made many small adjustments and feature changes in response to these customer requirements - with many more planned for 2019.

Installation in progress at Suncorp Adelaide. Woodgrain is the new white it seems.

Software 2.6 Release - Visitor Lockers

Recently we were asked if we had a way to intelligently grant site visitors a daylocker without having to issue them a building access card or go through the steps of downloading and installing the Smartalock App for their phone.

We considered various approaches to this that were both fast and flexible, along with having the ability to integrate with existing visitor management systems via a simple API interface.

New in version 2.6 of Smartalock software is our first release for supporting Visitor lockers. With just a single piece of information from the visitor (their email address), our system can generate a one-time use QR code that is emailed to the visitor. The visitor then simply taps the visitor button on any Smartalock kiosk and holds up the QR code to be given their locker.

The Visitor taps the SCAN button on any locker bank showing the sign to present their Visitor code

Visitor Codes can be generated via the Smartalock admin portal by the client admin - and many different policies can be applied - ie which locker banks are available for visitors, how long the QR code is valid for etc. Further features are coming again in 2.7 which is as always a free upgrade for our existing clients.

PWC Wellington

The recently completed Smartalock installation for PWC in their beautiful new building on Wellingtons waterfront. PWC have embraced the Smartalock smartphone app and a fully self-service approach to the their employees personal storage lifecycle. PWC employees can use their Gallagher building access card, Smartalock App, my.smartalock.com portal, or, failing that a PIN number to obtain, use and release their locker.

The use of a relatively high bottom locker with an open void storage area in-between the toe-kick means no-one complains about getting the bottom row. 

PWC also included end of trip lockers and make use of Smartalocks advanced locker policy control, allowing for users to both concurrently have an End of Trip day locker for a few hours while also having personal storage on the working floor. 

Recent Installations

Westpac Christchurch gets 2 floors of lockers in the new The Terraces development. Looking good with building card integration complete. A single Smartalock system now covers users in both Auckland and Christchurch offices.

BDO Accountants also extended an existing installation where we also upgraded their system to support new self-service and web administration. One of the benefits of the Smartalock system is its ability to easily add a few more doors to an existing locker bank without massive amounts of reconfiguration. 

My.Smartalock.Com - Self Service End User Portal Now Live

When an organisation has many hundreds or thousands of users, managing end user locker allocations is never a job that Facilities Management wants to take on. Smartalock has always included the ability for end users to self manage their own locker, but now with my.smartalock.com it becomes even easier for end users to allocate a locker to themselves, remotely open, release or share with other users, without needing to involve facilities management, property or IT. 

With a common login for the Smartalock App, my.smartalock.com seamlessly integrates with the existing end user Apps and can also be integrated with clients desktop cloud single sign on systems such as Okta or similar.

Facilities can then focus on what is more important to them - focusing on the big picture to improve productivity. The Smartalock analytics reporting (included free with each system) provides detailed utilisation rates by locker bank, top 10 and bottom 10 users and other detailed reports that help optimise current floorspace and future planning. 

Flight Centre Looking Good

Flight Centre Auckland - the first 2 floors now complete and users enjoying their new locker system. Mixture of Smartphone app and card users, Self-service portal and fully automated integration with existing swipe card management system.

Recent Australian Installs

Smartalock has landed in Oz, with 4 successful jobs completed in last month or so.

The first phase of 800+ lockers for Suncorp have been completed and installed. End users are operating via the Kiosks new self-service operating mode, allowing employees with a building badge (swipe card) to obtain, release or move lockers between locker banks without any interaction with the building concierge.

A further 400+ locker system has also been commissioned for Australia's Department of Water and Agriculture. This system uses an innovative mixup of lockers sizes and finishes within the same locker bank.

Were also pleased to finish off installations for SWIFT's new Sydney offices and continue deploying new locker systems for Xero, this time in Melbourne. 

Recent Installations

Some photos of recent installations at Westpac. Smart no-visible-handle design using V2 locks and controllers and V1 kiosk. Double sided bays with 24-28 doors per side or single sided bays with 24-32 doors per bay.

Low profile 100mm Kick is enough to house all the Smartalock electronics. Centrally controlled and administered via our upgraded master web interface, and taking direct feed from existing access card system to keep users and their locker assignments always up to date.

Version 2.0 Locks, Controllers and Kiosk Options

Available for all installs after April 2017, we have transitioned to our newest version 2 lock and controller hardware. The advantages of version 2 are most apparent for installers with a new Jig mounting method, slots for fine tuning the lock position on the wall and no requirement to open the lock enclosure to connect the cabling. A new wire cover keeps all cabling protected from interference.

The controller v2 hardware features new failsafe "open all lockers now" operation and supports external UPS protection. A simple emergency push button (secured by traditional key) can immediately open all lockers on demand. The new controller v2 can now optionally detect when being powered by UPS and signal to the Master server that power maybe lost soon.

In response to customer feedback we have also increased the flexibility of the Kiosk options for each locker bank. A full touchscreen kiosk is not required for all locker banks, rather some or all may use a small and much lower cost card reader only option. As any touchscreen kiosk can open any locker on the system, this allows customers to reduce the number of full touchscreen kiosks deployed to meet the occasional PIN access for all users, while still allowing swipe card and smartphone operation at each bank.

Wellington and Christchurch

Some recent installs of Smartalock at Xero in Wellington and Aspect Christchurch.

The black locker carcass really needs a black Kiosk. Working on that.

Xero Wellington trial locker bank - using existing building cards and Android/iPhone App for door access.

End of Trip Smartlockers

Smartalock fits well into new buildings where staff are encouraged to bike or walk to work, and a shared "End of Trip" shower facility is included in the base build. Smartalock integrates with steel lockers here and existing building card users are able to swipe for an on demand locker.

The lunchtime workout crowd also have a purpose built place to store work gear and charge up their phones while doing their midday exercise. 

Recent Installations

Some photos from recent locker install at IBM Auckland. Looking good and working well on  Swipe Cards and the Kiosk Pin pad. Rollout of Android and iPhone app coming shortly. Central admin of 228 lockers spread over 8 banks from a single reception console, or via the web interface.

Each bank has a unique colour to make identification easy, and our customised Kiosk screen is colour matched to the locker door colours. Mailslots and no unsightly door handles.

The locker banks are generally on fixed allocation, however IBM visitors and out of town workers can dynamically receive a locker by swiping a building access card to be allocated a day locker from any free lockers within the bank.

Humble Beginnings

We started Smartalock about 2 years ago in a garage. Last week scrolling through my phone I found a 3 second video of our first card read opening a lock via our built-from-scratch locker signalling protocol we invented a couple of weeks earlier. It was the first proof of controller to locker comms.