The biggest issue I find there is that your insurance company will not like Lockitron at all. So expect a price rise; or, quite plausibly, if your house is broken into and there is a Lockitron in place, then it will be used as an excuse to not cover your losses. Even if the burglar used the very old-fashioned entry method known as big-stone-through-window.
For availability, you should not rely on a Lockitron to allow entry, because:
- Your Internet access might be down for some reason (including power outage).
- Your phone might be inoperative (crashed, stolen, or even an empty battery...).
- The Lockitron itself could be out of batteries (it is supposed to warn you in advance, but how reliable is this ? There is little available data).
- The Lockitron company might go bankrupt at some point (not that I wish them so, but it happens).
- The Lockitron servers could have some downtime.
So you should still have a physical, old style metal key in your pocket, if you want reasonable guarantees that you will be able to enter your home every night. Especially stormy nights, the kind of time when power or network outages are rather common, and you really do not want to spend the night without a roof over your head. The added value of Lockitron is not there (especially since a key is quite small compared to a smartphone); the potentially interesting part is in making it possible to remotely unlock the door. This is not a scenario which happens every day... which is a problem: if the device is not that useful, how will the company maintain financial buoyancy ?
Of course, Lockitron inherently obtains the power to open all locks. They promise that:
- they are not evil;
- they will not be hacked.
Both promises are somewhat empty, when you come down to it. Claiming "I am not evil" is what most evil people do; merely stating it does not inherently make it true (if you believe otherwise, and you are a US citizen, then rejoice! You will soon have an electorate choice between two non-evil candidates). For the non-hacking, well, it all depends on how competent the Lockitron people are, and also on a fair amount of luck.
And then there is the whole customization part. Lockitron says that the device can be extended in a whole lot of ways, with a rich API. When I read that, I think "exploitable security holes". The more complex a system is, the more probable security holes are. The device already does WiFi and Bluetooth, so it must contain a substantial amount of software. It might be not as hackable as your phone, but still...
On the positive side, Lockitron-like systems would be convenient for emergency services like firemen and medics (well, at least medics: a fireman's ax is remarkably effective at gaining entry almost everywhere). Assuming that they obtain a generic entry authorization, of course (which would itself be a security risk).