SAKURA Internet What happens when the key to a rental property becomes a smart lock?　Exclusive coverage of the development company

In late April, Sakura Internet announced that it would jointly establish S2i with rental real estate giant Apaman Group.

The first compatible product of SAKURA's IoT Platform, which is the core of our efforts with S2i, is the "smart lock for real estate agents" being developed by hardware startup "tsumug" located in DMM.make AKIBA. It turned out to be.

The service name is tentatively "Sharing Key". We will deliver the first public information of companies that have been active in stealth through exclusive coverage.

Tsumug is a hardware startup founded by Eri Makita. With DMM.make AKIBA as a development base, it is a venture that has just been established as a development company for IoT devices for real estate.

Mr. Eri Makita, CEO & President of tsumug in the center, Mr. Yota Egusa of Sakura Internet's Platform Division Service Development Team on the left, and Mr. Ryosuke Yamaguchi, Director of the company's IoT Business Promotion Office on the right.

First of all, please note that the "sharing key (provisional)" is a concept prototype. Therefore, there is a high possibility that the exterior design will change at the time of commercialization, and the degree of freedom of installation may also change at the time of commercialization. But the concept is clear and unique.

The product that tsumug aims for is "a smart lock for B2B that is completely specialized for the real estate industry." Instead of simply digitizing what can be done with a physical key, it eliminates all physical keys and enables a significant reduction in rental property key management work and future minpaku.

Regarding the key lending management business, we aim to improve business by eliminating physical lending and borrowing and key management places, not human costs.

As an image, if a real estate agent manages 50,000 properties, in addition to managing 50,000 physical keys, 1,000 units of deposits and withdrawals occur on a monthly basis. We are aiming to eliminate this and create a smart lock that can be used conveniently by residents.

Image when attached to the door. Installed on the front side of the front door. Installation can be done by removing several bolts on the side (right hand) in the same way as removing a normal cylinder.

Usually replace the cylinder with the right outside key. Instead, if you attach a sharing key, the front door will transform into a smart lock.

In some respects, the approach of sharing keys is completely different from the smart locks that exist in Japan today.

The biggest difference is that almost all existing smart locks are retrofitted to the "internal key", while the sharing key is retrofitted to the "external key". The reason for attaching it to the outside key is that we emphasized that "installation and maintenance can be done without changing the work flow of 'cylinder replacement at the time of moving in', which is unique to Japanese rental real estate."

The installation of the sharing key can be installed in the cylinder exchange flow that the real estate management company performs as a normal business. Specifically, after removing the outer key cylinder, the sharing key is installed (instead of a new cylinder).

Corresponding key manufacturers are MIWA and GOAL, major domestic companies. By dealing with these two companies, we expect to be able to deal with about the top 70% of real estate properties, although it depends partly on the management company. The power supply is built-in and battery or battery-powered. Although the battery replacement cycle is undecided because it is in the early stages of development, we aim to make it unnecessary to replace the battery for one year.

One of the unique things about the demo was that it made a rather lively beeping sound during the initial communication setup after installation. In fact, the "real estate agent specification" adopted the sound that makes you feel like you are setting up. By making it possible to tell whether the setting is in progress or when the setting is completed by sound alone, it becomes easy to understand that the setting is completed when the beep is heard, regardless of the IT knowledge of the installer, and there is no need to pay attention to the screen.

Currently, the 10 key seems to be a touch panel. In an environment where there is no terminal such as a smartphone, unlock with 10 key operation.

There are three ways to unlock the sharing key: "Unlocking with the app", "Unlocking with the feature phone link", and "Unlocking with the numeric keypad touch pad on the main unit". In other words, the door replaced with the sharing key becomes a door without a physical key.

In addition to using the smart lock function, residents can also operate as a gateway that connects the IoT devices used in the room to the Internet.

Why did you choose SAKURA's IoT Platform? The reason for this is the unprecedented cost advantage and ease of infrastructure development.

Smart locks for the real estate industry should be equipped with 3G/LTE communication functions.

In general smart locks that use WiFi or Bluetooth, it is necessary to prepare an internet environment for the vacant property for remote opening and closing. This is because the trouble of "I'm sorry" is unavoidable to some extent (as long as wireless is used).

However, if a 3G/LTE communication module is built into a smart lock, it is said that the cost will increase by 20,000 to 30,000 yen, so it cannot be adopted easily.

Sakura's IoT communication module is very inexpensive, only a few thousand yen, including the communication module and communication costs for one to two years, based on information obtained from interviews with various stakeholders. It seems that the offer price is being considered (at the time of writing the manuscript, there is no official announcement). This is one of the biggest reasons why I was hired.

According to SAKURA IoT Platform presentation materials announced on February 8, 2016.

According to SAKURA IoT Platform presentation materials announced on February 8, 2016.

Also, regarding the ease of infrastructure development, Mr. Makita points out that there are few engineers who are familiar with infrastructure development in the first place. If you go to a specialty store, you can get the 3G/LTE SIM module itself, but it is quite difficult to find people who can develop infrastructure hardware and software, and there are experts who can ask questions (compared to developers of IoT devices and services). Not many. Under such circumstances, he said that he was very grateful to be able to ask Sakura Internet about unclear points in infrastructure development.

Regarding Sakura Internet's development support system, Mr. Yota Egusa of the Service Development Team of the Platform Division said, "We support the scope of general product support and the parts that need to be studied as IoT development cases. There are some things that need to be done," he said. I would like to be involved in the creation of ."

According to Mr. Makita, sharing key plans to start demonstration experiments with actual real estate properties in 2016. Although his partner is still a secret, he said that he would like to proceed with demonstration experiments with multiple companies, not just one.

Sakura's IoT Platform compatible products, including tsumug's sharing key, will be exhibited at the "Cloud Computing EXPO Spring" held at Tokyo Big Sight from May 11 (Wednesday) to 13 (Friday). In addition, multiple partners are planning to unveil the actual machine under development for the first time. Among them is an IoT solution for agriculture, which will be unveiled for the first time. (*Added on May 9, 2016. Some expressions have been changed due to a request from the interviewee.)

■Related Site Cloud Computing EXPO Spring Sakura IoT Platform