Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail
Summary
Troy Hunt shares a personal anecdote about being locked out of his house due to dead batteries in an IoT door lock, highlighting the dangers of relying on smart home technology without manual backup.
<img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/fb/33/fb3391dc-723d-4e74-b95a-d641b5feb38e/content/images/2026/07/Splash-Template@1x_1.jpg" alt="Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail"><p>"Build a smart home", they said. "It'll make life so much better", they said. Well, life wasn't very bloody good at 23:00 the other night after travelling 33 hours from Paris only to find the IoT doorlock batteries dead and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/80aQgCXr8Ko?ref=troyhunt.com" rel="noreferrer">the 9V "jump start" procedure</a> completely failing! Eventually, the locksmith arrived and opened an old-school physical lock on another door in an alarmingly short time. So, lessons:</p><ol><li>Battery-powered locks suck and will eventually lock you out of your house</li><li>Don't trust a fallback mechanism as rudimentary as "hold a 9V battery on some terminals"</li><li>Always have an old school manual backup approach, AKA "a key"</li></ol><p>As I say in the video, we do have other doors that have keys, and if it weren't for the complacency we developed, we would have had one of these accessible. But alas, we didn't. The path forward is to take a deep dive into <a href="https://ui.com/us/en/door-access?ref=troyhunt.com" rel="noreferrer">Ubiquiti's Access ecosystem</a>, which I've flagged in the past, and by pure coincidence, I already had a meeting lined up with them to discuss just this. So, the hardware is on the way, and I'll have something entirely new to play with in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!</p>
<!--kg-card-begin: html-->
<div><div style="width: 170px; display: inline-block; margin-right: 3px;"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/troy-hunts-weekly-update-podcast/id1176454699?ref=troy-hunt"><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/fb/33/fb3391dc-723d-4e74-b95a-d641b5feb38e/content/images/2018/05/Listen-on-Apple-Podcasts.svg" alt="Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail"></a></div><div style="width: 175px; display: inline-block; margin-right: 3px;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7LAAxaabizMAXnJe0s3xjQ30q12EVmjt&ref=troyhunt.com"><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/fb/33/fb3391dc-723d-4e74-b95a-d641b5feb38e/content/images/2024/09/Watch-and-Listen-on-YouTube.svg" alt="Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail"></a></div><div style="width: 118px; display: inline-block; margin-right: 3px;"><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/7jMtKFohdrw6qmz8AkLqit?ref=troy-hunt"><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/fb/33/fb3391dc-723d-4e74-b95a-d641b5feb38e/content/images/2019/10/spotify.svg" class="kg-image" alt="Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail"></a></div><div style="width: 120px; display: inline-block;"><a href="https://omny.fm/shows/troy-hunt-weekly-update/playlists/podcast.rss?ref=troy-hunt"><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/fb/33/fb3391dc-723d-4e74-b95a-d641b5feb38e/content/images/2018/07/Download-via-RSS.svg" alt="Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail"></a></div><iframe width="100%" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GN7Xmsr5V34" title="YouTube video player" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen loading="lazy" spellcheck="false"></iframe></div>
<!--kg-card-end: html-->
View Cached Full Text
Cached at: 07/15/26, 10:53 AM
# Weekly Update 512: IoT Lockout Fail
Source: [https://www.troyhunt.com/weekly-update-512/](https://www.troyhunt.com/weekly-update-512/)
"Build a smart home", they said\. "It'll make life so much better", they said\. Well, life wasn't very bloody good at 23:00 the other night after travelling 33 hours from Paris only to find the IoT doorlock batteries dead and[the 9V "jump start" procedure](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/80aQgCXr8Ko?ref=troyhunt.com)completely failing\! Eventually, the locksmith arrived and opened an old\-school physical lock on another door in an alarmingly short time\. So, lessons:
1. Battery\-powered locks suck and will eventually lock you out of your house
2. Don't trust a fallback mechanism as rudimentary as "hold a 9V battery on some terminals"
3. Always have an old school manual backup approach, AKA "a key"
As I say in the video, we do have other doors that have keys, and if it weren't for the complacency we developed, we would have had one of these accessible\. But alas, we didn't\. The path forward is to take a deep dive into[Ubiquiti's Access ecosystem](https://ui.com/us/en/door-access?ref=troyhunt.com), which I've flagged in the past, and by pure coincidence, I already had a meeting lined up with them to discuss just this\. So, the hardware is on the way, and I'll have something entirely new to play with in the coming weeks\. Stay tuned\!
[](https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/troy-hunts-weekly-update-podcast/id1176454699?ref=troy-hunt)
[](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7LAAxaabizMAXnJe0s3xjQ30q12EVmjt&ref=troyhunt.com)
[](https://open.spotify.com/show/7jMtKFohdrw6qmz8AkLqit?ref=troy-hunt)
[](https://omny.fm/shows/troy-hunt-weekly-update/playlists/podcast.rss?ref=troy-hunt)
[Weekly update](https://www.troyhunt.com/tag/weekly-update/)
Similar Articles
Weekly Update 518: IoT Doorlock Nirvana with UniFi
Troy Hunt shares his method for implementing an IoT door lock system using UniFi, highlighting key principles like main power, fail-secure design, local control, and manual override for residential settings.
Weekly Update 519: Breaches & Data Integrity
Troy Hunt's weekly update covers his busy week with talks on 3D printing and infosec, data breaches, and IoT projects, focusing on security and data integrity topics.
Weekly Update 527: Cybergeddon News v. Reality
Troy Hunt's weekly update reflects on the aftermath of the 'PHP2Shell' vulnerability hype, noting the predicted cyber apocalypse never materialized and attributions to real breaches were scarce despite widespread vulnerable sites.
Weekly Update 494
Troy Hunt's weekly update covers a flurry of five data breaches loaded into Have I Been Pwned in just two days, including details on the Odido, KomikoAI, Quitbro, Lovora, and Provecho breaches.
Weekly Update 516: Live From Vietnam
Troy Hunt's weekly update podcast from Vietnam discusses the Brinks Home data breach, criticizing the company's FAQ for failing to answer basic incident response questions, and outlines the typical extortion pattern involving vishing and OAuth.