Morning Industries RF Deadbolt Locks

Keys? So old-fashioned! We’ve been able to unlock our cars for years with a key fob, so why not unlock your door wirelessly as well? The Morning Industries RF Deadbolt is a great product that allows you to do just that – hit a button on your keychain from a couple feet away and the door magically unlocks – no keys necessary. Installation is very simple and well-documented; you just replace the current deadbolt with the Morning model. From the outside, the deadbolt looks like pretty much any other – with the addition of a red and green LEDs that light up when the deadbolt is locking or unlocking:

On the inside, you’ll have a slightly bigger-than-normal box that houses the 4 AA batteries and the motor mechanism to throw the latch, as well as the traditional deadbolt latch you use to manually throw the lock:

The key fobs (two are included, but you can get extra fobs) are simple and reasonably reliable, although I find the range relatively short (about 5 feet), and one of the batteries were dead in the package I received.

Aside from the range (which I can’t really complain about since it’s so much easier to push a button when carrying groceries into the house than landing a key), I’ve heard complaints about the cosmetics of the “large box” on the inside (really!?). The biggest issue I’ve personally found is that the motor isn’t too strong; originally the deadbolt didn’t perfectly line up with the hole in the door jam, and the motor sometimes jammed when throwing the deadbolt. The good news is that if the bolt gets jammed there’s an audio cue (a double-beep) that indicates the lock hasn’t thrown. This can be fixed by either repositioning the deadbolt plate, or in my case I used a Dremel tool to shave 1/8″ off the bottom of my deadbolt plate to make the bolt slide in smoothly.