How IoT is Making Your Home Safer and Smarter

August 20, 2015

The Internet of Things (IoT) shows no sign of slowing down.

As an industry-leading provider of home security solutions, Allegion™ is focused on identifying ways to employ the IoT concept – that many of today’s common objects will have Internet-related capabilities – in its upcoming products. The Schlage Sense™ system, unveiled at the 2015 International CES tradeshow, is at the forefront of the company’s smart home efforts.

Schlage®, a brand of Allegion, has a 95-year history of creating hardware that lasts. With the Schlage Sense system, Allegion gives users easier and more convenient ways to control access to their home. Compatible with Apple HomeKit™ technology, Schlage Sense provides an easy, secure way to control your door lock from your iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod® touch.

After connecting a mobile device to Schlage Sense, a homeowner can use Siri™ voice control on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to activate the lock. Schlage also provides an app to operate the lock and program its many features, including adding up to 30 access codes.

Allegion approached SEP because it needed additional flexible, high caliber engineering resources to achieve its aggressive project goals.

“To meet Allegion’s aggressive project goals,” said Jake Baker, Senior Engineer, SEP, “the project team needed to help Allegion by developing custom-made tools for verification and firmware updates, and implemented new authentication libraries.”

SEP’s ability to adapt to changes in technology and shifts in the mobile market have had a noticeable impact at Allegion.

“This project was an opportunity for SEP to implement many of our more established practices,” said Mohammed Afaneh, Software Engineer, SEP. “We also helped Allegion by providing them with a couple of key tools: Git and SEP TeamWorks. Git is an open source configuration management tool and SEP TeamWorks is a work item management tool that facilitates a Kanban board.”

Though just the first project SEP has worked on with Allegion, the relationship has been successful. Allegion is highly regarded for its progressive methods and willingness to work with SEP’s established teams to perfect development practices.

“Allegion was familiar with SEP’s great reputation and our history of working in the home security industry,” said Adam Scroggin, Engineering Manager, SEP. “We are thrilled to be part of Allegion’s success with Schlage Sense.”

“SEP was very easy to work with on this project,” said Michelle Vickrey, Lead Firmware Engineer at Allegion. “The engineers were knowledgeable on low-level embedded features and provided the customization that we needed, and also brought high-level firmware techniques to the table. Likewise, the Git and TeamWorks tools enabled almost real-time updates and a way of visualizing the project that were highly valuable in a fast-moving project with people in multiple locations. The engineers from SEP worked well with the team and made the experience very pleasant.”

SCHLAGE, and SCHLAGE SENSE are the property of Allegion, All rights reserved.

APPLE TV, IPAD, IPHONE, IPOD, IPOD TOUCH and SIRI are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. HOMEKIT is a trademark of Apple Inc.