I’ve been looking at devices around the home recently and I stumbled upon these biometric door locks. The concept is not new of course but it’s only in the last few years that they’ve been available as a plug and play (drill and play?) package for home installations.

I’ve seen a few different models and as I was looking at the specs I noticed one glaring fact – the cheap ones have an operating temperature that bottoms out at 0 degrees C! That might work in California but I can assure you that over here in the UK we need something considerably more hardy than that, even in the relatively sunny South!

Which is why I like this one. The FP-300 from fingerprintentry.co.uk is available in gold (which is just nasty) and a more conventional silver. 640 fingerprint storage might be overkill for the average house but the -20 to +50 degrees operating range is more in keeping with what I’d expect.