Looking For Information On Vizpin

The company behind them is ECKey, a startup. Here's a local newspaper account on them from last year, discussing small funding and noting, "Actual sales are “still very small ... with around 1,000 of the units getting into the hands of customers so far."

Brian can comment about the pros and cons of the smartphone / bluetooth based access approach.

ECKey has been around for years, their angle has been bluetooth credentials/Access aaS for most of that time. Early on the company had issues with unreliable gear (the old IPVM LinkedIn group had quite a thread on it) and that ran dealers away.

I am not familiar with VIZpin beyond looking at cutsheets, but the concept seems solid. Managing everything in the cloud, pushing it to phones, and using the phones to update/activate the lock is basically the way Hotel Access Systems work (except with keycards instead of phones) and those are maybe the most widely used access systems out there. Other offerings like Salto Clay are similar to VIZpin.

For VIZpin, the major question is price and is it cheaper than equal/more capable small access systems. Even with the reduced upfront hardware cost, does the ongoing service fee make sense for end users?

Also, VINpin is not able to be integrated with systems like video or intrusion and the potential types of locking hardware is fairly limited based on the controllerless design of VIZpin.