Smart Home, Camera & Connected Features

A smart lock adds remote awareness and remote control: it tells you what is happening at your door when you are not there, and lets you do something about it from your phone. A basic digital lock is a local device — you stand in front of it, present a fingerprint, PIN or card, and it opens.

Everything it knows stays inside the lock. A smart lock adds a radio, usually Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, so it can push events to an app.

In daily use that means three things. You get notifications when the door is opened, by whom, and when.

You can unlock or lock remotely, which is how you let in a parent who forgot their code or check that the door actually locked after the last person left. And you can issue and delete credentials without being at home — a temporary PIN for a cleaner, revoked the same evening.

The trade-off is that smart features depend on your Wi-Fi, the manufacturer's servers and your phone. The lock's core job — fingerprint, PIN, mechanical key override — should still work perfectly when all of that is down, and on any decent model it does.

Ask yourself one question before paying more: in the last year, how often did you genuinely need to know or control something at your door while away from home? If the answer is rarely, a good offline lock may serve you better.

It depends on how your lock talks. A hub, sometimes called a gateway or bridge, is a small plug-in box that sits in your flat, connects to your router, and translates between the lock's short-range radio and the internet.

If your lock communicates over Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave or Thread, it has no way to reach the internet on its own — the hub is what gives it remote access. If your lock has Wi-Fi built in, you generally do not need one.

Why do manufacturers bother with a hub instead of putting Wi-Fi in every lock? Battery life.

Wi-Fi is power-hungry; low-energy radios like Bluetooth, Zigbee and Thread sip a fraction of the power, so a hub-based lock can run considerably longer between battery changes. The cost is another device, another power point, and another thing that can go offline.

Placement matters more than people expect. A hub too far from the door — say, in the bedroom while the lock is at the main door with a metal gate in between — will drop connection intermittently.

Keep it within reasonable line of sight, ideally in the living area near the entrance. Before buying, ask two things: is the gateway included in the quoted price or an add-on, and where in a typical HDB layout should it be plugged in for a reliable link to your door?

For most Singapore homeowners, only two of these matter: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The rest are worth understanding only if you are building a wider smart home.

Bluetooth is short range and very low power. It lets your phone talk to the lock when you are standing near it — useful for enrolling users and unlocking as you approach — but it will not reach you overseas without a gateway.

Wi-Fi connects the lock straight to your router and the internet, giving true remote access with no extra box, at the cost of shorter battery life. Zigbee and Z-Wave are low-power mesh standards used in wider smart home systems; both need a compatible hub.

Thread is the newer, faster equivalent, and is the radio that many modern devices use underneath Matter. Matter itself is not a radio at all — it is a common language that lets devices from different brands work together across platforms.

The practical hierarchy is simple. Decide first whether you want remote access at all.

If yes, choose Wi-Fi built in or Bluetooth plus a gateway. Only then worry about Zigbee, Thread or Matter, and only if you already own or plan to own other smart devices.

Matter is a shared standard that lets smart home devices from different brands work with different platforms without each manufacturer writing separate integrations. In plain terms, a Matter-certified lock should be able to appear in more than one ecosystem's app rather than being locked to the brand that made it.

It is backed by most of the major technology companies, which is why it gets so much attention. Does it future-proof your lock?

Partly, and it would be dishonest to promise more. Matter meaningfully reduces the risk that your lock becomes an orphan if one platform loses interest, and it makes basic functions — lock, unlock, battery level, door state — portable across systems.

But the standard is still maturing, advanced features like fingerprint management and camera streams usually stay inside the manufacturer's own app, and support quality varies a lot between products that all carry the same badge. A lock's physical lifespan is also far longer than any software standard's comfortable lifetime.

Treat Matter as a sensible tiebreaker rather than a reason to pay a large premium or to reject an otherwise excellent lock. And never assume: Matter support is model-specific, not brand-specific, so check the spec sheet for the exact model you are quoted and ask the retailer to confirm it in writing.

In AN Digital Lock, you may consider looking up for Solity G1 bundle which is jointly develop by us and the Solity team in Korea. This bundle offers multiple useful functions and is crowned the the number 1 best selling model on Lazada.

Some locks can, but you must check the exact model rather than the brand. Support for Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa is decided model by model, and it is common for a manufacturer to offer it on one or two premium models while the rest of the range works only through the brand's own app.

Marketing pages often blur this. The spec sheet, or a written confirmation from the retailer, is the only reliable source.

Where support exists, what you get is usually a subset of the app's functions: lock the door, check whether it is locked, see battery level, and include the lock in a scene or routine. Remote unlocking by voice is normally restricted, and rightly so — most platforms require a PIN spoken or entered before an unlock command is accepted, because anyone within earshot of a speaker could otherwise open your door.

Some brands disable voice unlocking altogether. You will often also need the manufacturer's gateway or Wi-Fi module in place first, since the platform talks to the brand's cloud rather than directly to the lock.

Before you commit, do this: name the platform you use, name the exact model number, and ask the retailer to point you to the line in the product's own documentation that confirms it. If they cannot, assume it is app-only.

Assuming your lock has Wi-Fi or a connected gateway, and your home internet is up, you can typically do four useful things from anywhere in the world. You can see the access log — who entered, and when.

You can check the current state of the door, including whether it is locked and whether it was left ajar. You can lock it remotely if it was left open.

And you can create, change or delete PINs and user access, which is what most people actually value: letting in a relative, a plumber or a pet sitter without couriering a key. Remote unlocking is usually possible too, but many owners deliberately leave it disabled, and some models require an extra confirmation step.

Think carefully about whether you want a door that can be opened by anyone holding your unlocked phone. The important caveat is dependency.

Everything above needs your home Wi-Fi to be working, your router to be powered, the manufacturer's servers to be up, and the lock's batteries to have charge. A power cut in Singapore is rare but a router reboot is not.

Before a long trip, run one check: open the app while on mobile data with home Wi-Fi off, confirm the lock still responds, and make sure someone local has a valid PIN as a fallback.

Most connected locks can notify you on door unlocked and by which user, door locked, door left open, wrong PIN or fingerprint attempts, tamper or forced-entry alerts, and low battery. Some add doorbell presses, motion at the door, or a monthly summary.

Out of the box, many locks have everything switched on, which in a household of four means a phone buzzing every time someone comes home from school or work. Almost every app lets you trim this, and the settings are worth ten minutes on day one.

The usual approach is to keep the safety-relevant alerts and turn off the routine ones. Keep tamper and forced-entry alerts, repeated failed attempts, door-left-open, and low battery.

Turn off, or reduce to a daily digest, the ordinary unlock notifications for family members you expect to come and go. A more selective option on some models is per-user notification: silence your spouse and children, but alert you specifically when the helper's PIN, a temporary code, or an unknown credential is used.

That gives you the information that actually changes your behaviour without the constant background noise. One practical takeaway: if you find yourself swiping away lock notifications without reading them, they have stopped working as security. Switch off the routine ones deliberately so the alerts that remain still make you look.

Yes, if the lock and the other devices sit on a shared platform (example, TUYA) — but this is a convenience feature, not something to buy a lock for. The mechanism is a routine or automation: the lock reports "door unlocked by Mum" to the platform, and the platform triggers whatever you have configured.

The automations people in Singapore flats actually use are modest and genuinely pleasant. Entrance and living room lights on when the door unlocks after dark.

Aircon in the bedroom starting when the first person arrives home in the afternoon, so the room is comfortable rather than stifling. The robot vacuum pausing when someone comes home and resuming when the last person leaves.

Lights and fans off, and a "goodbye" scene running, when the door locks and nobody is home. Two honest caveats.

First, these chains depend on cloud services talking to each other, so they occasionally fail or lag by several seconds — fine for lighting, less fine for anything you rely on. Second, all of it needs your lock and your other devices to be on compatible platforms, which is model-specific and must be confirmed on the spec sheet, not assumed from the brand.

Examples of products that are TUYA-enabled will be the whole range of Hafele Evolve Pro series (Infinity / Horizon / Zenith / Quantum Pro / Nova) as well as Kaadas new locks which includes the Q9 and R9 for gate lock. If this appeals, start small: set up one automation, live with it for a month, and expand only if you actually miss it when it breaks.

Often yes within a single brand's ecosystem, and sometimes across brands if both sit on a common platform — but a digital lock is not an alarm system and should not be sold to you as one. What is realistic is event linking: the lock detects something and another device responds.

Common, useful combinations include a camera starting a recording and saving a clip when the door is unlocked or when repeated wrong PINs are entered; an indoor siren or smart speaker sounding when the lock's tamper alarm triggers; and a hallway camera capturing the corridor when a forced-entry alert fires, so you have footage rather than just a notification. Some monitored alarm systems can also use lock events for arming and disarming — the last person leaving and locking the door arms the system, a valid unlock disarms it.

The limits matter. Cross-brand linking usually needs both devices on the same platform, cloud round-trips add a few seconds of delay, and none of it works if your internet is down.

A lock that is Wi-Fi connected but not integrated with anything will still alarm audibly at the door, which is what deters most opportunistic attempts anyway. If security integration is your goal, decide on the alarm or camera system first, then choose a lock the system supports — and ask the retailer to confirm compatibility against the specific model.

They are different pieces of hardware solving overlapping problems. A camera lock puts the lens into the lock body or the door escutcheon, and it usually looks straight out from your door leaf.

A video doorbell is a separate unit mounted beside the door or on the gate, with its own button, and it works with any lock you like. The camera lock's appeal is that it is one device, one app, one set of batteries and one installation.

It sees whoever stands directly at your door and typically wakes on motion or on a button press, and it ties the footage to lock events. Its limits are physical: it is fixed at lock height, its field of view is set by where the lock sits, and if it fails you are dealing with your lock and your camera at once.

On an HDB flat with a metal gate, the gate can also sit between the lens and the visitor. A doorbell is more flexible.

You choose the mounting height and angle, you can replace it independently, and you can pair it with a simpler, cheaper, longer-lasting lock. It needs its own installation and, on some models, its own power.

Rule of thumb: if you want the simplest possible setup, go camera lock. If you want the best view of your entrance, go separate doorbell.

Set your expectations at "good enough to recognise a familiar face and read a delivery uniform", not at CCTV standard. Camera locks and video doorbells run on batteries, so every design decision favours power saving over image quality: modest resolution, compressed video, a few seconds of warm-up before the stream is sharp, and a frame rate that can look slightly jerky.

That is a fair trade for a device you charge or re-battery a few times a year, but it is not the same as a mains-powered camera. Night vision on this class of device is almost always infrared, which gives you a black-and-white image.

It is genuinely usable at close range — the person standing at your door will be clearly visible — but it falls off quickly with distance, and it can wash out faces that are very close to the lens. In an HDB corridor with reasonable lighting, most owners find it perfectly serviceable.

Two things degrade real-world quality more than the sensor does: a weak Wi-Fi signal at the door, which forces the stream to drop quality, and a metal gate between the lens and the visitor. Before buying, ask to see live footage from the actual model in the showroom, and ask specifically about the resolution and field of view on that model rather than accepting a general claim about the brand.

Almost always only on motion or on an event, because these devices run on batteries. Continuous recording would flatten a battery in days and generate enormous amounts of video nobody watches.

What you get instead is event-based capture: the camera wakes when it detects motion in front of the door, when someone presses the doorbell, when the lock is unlocked, or when a tamper or wrong-PIN alert fires, records a short clip of typically a few seconds to a minute, then goes back to sleep. Something to note: a digital lock that comes with inbuilt camera or even a digital video doorbell is NOT a CCTV.

The practical consequence is a small blind spot. There is a brief delay between motion being detected and recording starting, so the very first moment of an approach can be missed, and if someone stands still outside the detection zone the camera may never wake at all.

Most models let you adjust motion sensitivity and set detection zones, which is worth tuning — too sensitive and every neighbour walking past fills your storage, too dull and you miss the delivery rider. If you genuinely need continuous coverage of your entrance, that is a job for a mains-powered camera like an ip camera or cctv, not a lock.

One setting to check on day one: whether the model buffers a second or two of pre-roll before the trigger. Models that do give you a noticeably more useful clip, and it is a fair question to ask before you buy.

For basic lock functions, no. Access logs, lock and unlock notifications, PIN management and remote control are normally included with the app at no extra charge, and it would be unusual for a manufacturer to charge for them.

Where subscriptions appear is video and long-term history. The typical pattern is a free tier that gives you live view and a short retention window — often only the last day or few days of clips, sometimes only event thumbnails rather than full video — with a paid plan extending storage, adding longer clips, richer detection such as person or package recognition, and access to more devices on one account.

Some models sidestep this entirely by recording to a memory card in the device or to a local base station, so you own the footage and pay nothing recurring. Access-log history is sometimes also capped on the free tier, with older entries dropping off.

None of this is inherently unreasonable — running video servers costs money — but it should be disclosed before you buy, not discovered afterwards. Ask three specific things about the exact model you are considering: what the free tier includes, how many days of video you get without paying, and whether the device supports local storage as an alternative.

Factor any recurring fee into your comparison, because over several years it can rival the price difference between two locks.

Yes, and this is one of the most genuinely useful things a connected door device does. The workflow is straightforward: someone approaches or presses the bell, your phone gets an alert with a snapshot or a live view, you look at it, and you decide.

You can do this from the sofa, from the bedroom, or from the office — you never have to stand behind the door. For most Singapore households the everyday value is mundane rather than dramatic.

You confirm it is the delivery rider and tell them through two-way audio to leave the parcel at the gate. You see it is a salesperson and simply do not respond.

You check on an elderly parent who has arrived early. If your device supports two-way talk, you can answer without opening at all, which is a real safety benefit for someone home alone.

The realistic limits: there is a short delay between the alert and a usable live image, and if your phone is on silent or your Wi-Fi is flaky, you may miss the moment entirely. A simple digital door viewer with a screen on the inside of the door achieves the same "check before opening" outcome without any app at all, and is worth considering if that is all you want. Before buying, test the alert-to-live-view delay yourself in the showroom.

Yes on most connected locks, and you should. Nearly every manufacturer app distinguishes between an administrator or owner account and ordinary member accounts.

The administrator can add and delete users, change settings, factory-reset the lock and manage the gateway. A member can typically lock and unlock, see the door status, and receive notifications, but cannot enrol new fingerprints, delete other people's access, or change security settings.

Some apps go further with a guest or temporary tier — access valid only within a date range or for a single use, which suits a relative visiting for a week or a contractor during renovation. Where available, this is far better practice than sharing your own login.

The tiers, and what each one can do, vary quite a bit between brands, so this is worth checking against the specific model rather than assuming. Two rules make this work in practice.

First, keep exactly one administrator, or at most two, and make sure it is someone who will still be contactable in five years — an owner, not a tenant or a helper. Second, never share the administrator login itself; add people as members instead, so you can remove them individually later.

When you take handover, ask the installer to show you where the member permission list lives in the app, and add your family members yourself so you know how it is done.

Nothing breaks at the door, and that is the reassuring part — the lock keeps working normally on fingerprint, PIN and card regardless of what happens to your phone. What is at stake is app control, and how you recover it depends on how the app authenticates.

Most manufacturer apps tie access to an account with an email address or mobile number and a password, not to the physical handset. In that case, changing phones is simply install the app, log in, and your locks reappear.

Some apps allow only one active session per account, so logging in on the new phone signs the old one out automatically, which is exactly what you want. A minority of Bluetooth-only locks store the credential on the device itself, in which case you may need to re-pair from the lock's admin menu.

If a phone is lost, treat it as an account security issue rather than a lock issue. Change the app account password, sign out other sessions if the app offers it, and check the user list in the app for anything you do not recognise.

Two things to do now, before you need them: enable two-factor authentication on the app account if it is offered, and make sure at least one other trusted household member has a working PIN so nobody is locked out while you sort out a new phone.

The connected features would stop; the lock itself would not. This is the honest answer, and it is worth understanding before you build habits around an app.

Remote unlocking, remote PIN management, push notifications, cloud video and any smart home integration all route through the manufacturer's servers. If those servers were switched off permanently, those functions would go with them.

What survives is everything that lives inside the lock: fingerprint, PIN, card, mechanical key override, auto-lock, the on-device alarm, and the admin menu on the keypad for adding and deleting users. Well-designed locks keep all core access working entirely offline, which is exactly why you should confirm that the model you are buying can enrol and delete users from the keypad, not only from the app.

How likely is this? For established brands with large installed bases it is unlikely in the short term, though the wider smart home industry has seen products lose cloud support after a few years.

This is one of the arguments in favour of buying from a brand with a long track record and a local distributor, and one of the modest arguments in favour of standards like Matter, which can keep basic functions alive on a third-party platform. Practical takeaway: ask any of AN Digital Lock consultant to demonstrate adding and removing a PIN using only the lock's own keypad before you buy.

Firmware is the lock's internal software, and updates are usually delivered through the manufacturer's app over Wi-Fi or the gateway. You open the app, it flags an available update, you confirm, and the lock installs it over a few minutes.

Offline locks with no radio generally cannot be updated at all in the field — if a fix is needed, it is a service visit. They matter, though not usually urgently.

Updates fix bugs, improve fingerprint accuracy and battery behaviour, add or repair platform integrations, and occasionally patch a security weakness. Skipping them indefinitely means running known-buggy software on the thing that secures your front door.

There are sensible precautions. Do not start an update when the batteries are low, because a lock that loses power mid-update can end up needing service.

Do not start one when you are about to leave the flat. And do not be alarmed if the lock is briefly unresponsive during the process — the mechanical key override still works.

A brand that ships regular firmware updates is signalling that the product is still supported, which is a genuinely useful thing to look at when comparing models. One habit worth forming: check the app for firmware updates when you change the batteries.

Tying the two together means you update roughly once or twice a year, with fresh batteries, without having to remember a separate schedule.

It will not slow your network down in any way you would notice. A lock sends tiny amounts of data — a few bytes per event — and even a camera lock streams only when triggered.

Against video calls, streaming and gaming, the traffic is negligible. Most locks also connect on the 2.4GHz band, which usually has spare capacity precisely because everything fast has moved to 5GHz.

Exposure is a fairer question, and the honest answer is that any internet-connected device slightly enlarges the surface area of your home network. That is true of your TV, your robot vacuum and your aircon controller too.

In practice, direct attacks on residential digital locks over the internet are rare in Singapore, and the realistic risks lie in weak passwords and unpatched routers rather than the lock itself. Despite attacks on your home network, currently there’s 0 cases of hacking to digital locks as the app and locks comes with strong encryption. Basic hygiene handles it well and costs nothing:

• Use a strong, unique Wi-Fi password, and change the router's default admin login.
• Keep the router's firmware updated, and replace routers that no longer receive updates.
• Put smart devices on a guest or IoT network if your router supports it, separate from your laptops and work devices.
• Use a unique password and two-factor authentication on the lock's app account.

Do those four things once at renovation, and connecting a lock adds very little practical risk.

It can be, and in one important respect app access is better — but only if you use the permission tiers properly. The advantage of app access over a PIN is that it cannot be shared as easily.

A PIN can be told to someone over the phone in three seconds; app access is tied to an account and a device, so passing it on takes deliberate effort and usually leaves a trace. The condition is that you add them as a limited member, never as an administrator, and never by sharing your own login.

A member should be able to unlock and see the door state; they should not be able to enrol new fingerprints, delete other users, change settings or factory-reset the lock. If the app offers time-bound or scheduled access — weekdays between certain hours, or valid until a tenancy end date — use it.

Revocation is the real reason to prefer app access. When a helper leaves or a tenancy ends, you remove them from the user list in seconds, from anywhere, and the change is logged.

Compare that with a PIN you must remember to delete at the lock. Two things to do at handover: confirm on the digital lock app's user list that the person holds member and not admin rights, and diary a reminder to review and remove access on the day the employment or tenancy ends.