Author: Bjørn Madsen

If you are trying to run some kind of an AirBNB, you need a lock that You can unlock remotely in case of a problem You can be sure people can’t come back once their rental time is up You can tell remotely when the door is shut and locked You can be certain that…

There is a parking garage somewhere in Seattle where criminals want to go really badly. It all started with this old Schlage D series knob getting destroyed. This was the most robust of Schlage’s product line and a very expensive lock, it is too bad this got ruined by some lowlife.        …

Sometimes I have a customer who’s fed up with their rickety old mortise lock but doesn’t want to get rid of it because they are so attractive. Sometimes it isn’t worth it to fix an old mortise lock because either there aren’t replacement parts, there’s too many broken parts to make repairs cost-effective, when locked…

Just bought a nice computer from system76.com, pretty excited to try out an nvme drive, decent video card, etc and buy the thing as a business expense. Only problem is, new computers are impossible to install operating systems on. I’ve probably spent  ten hours trying to install windows, debian, ubuntu, fedora etc on it. Originally…

One of the problems with being an early adopter of technology is that once a bunch of hardware is deployed that protects untold millions of dollars of stuff from theft, there is a big incentive to find vulnerabilities in that hardware. Regular old locks are tried and true. Their vulnerabilities are known. Most of these…

If you have an aging mortise lock, chances are that you can dress it up without replacing the expensive lock itself. Mortise locks have trim such as the knob or lever, thumblatch, and thumbturn that are visible and interact with the lock. They may be scarred and corroded. These parts can be replaced independently of…

Today I was rekeying a house for some people who just moved in. It looked like the sellers slapped some shiny new doorknobs on a few of the doors to dress them up. I was surprised when I took one apart to rekey it to see that the entire lock cylinder seemed to be made…

Think twice before calling one of those $15 locksmith ads. You need to have a lot of trust in the person who rekeys your house for a few reasons: You don’t know if they use the same keys for every house they rekey You don’t know if they used all of the pins in the…