Explore the technology behind battery-free NFC locks, from NFC energy harvesting and access authentication to electronic control, mechanical structure, security design and product testing.
Short answer: Most smart locks unlock fine without WiFi — the network exists for management, not for opening the door. Power is the harder question, and the answer depends on which of three jobs inside the lock loses its supply. Vendor pages tend to compress all of this into a reassuring "don't worry," which is exactly why the confusion persists. This article gives you the uncompressed version: a three-layer model of what a smart lock actually needs, a matrix of the four dif
NFC energy harvesting is the process of turning the 13.56 MHz radio field emitted by an NFC device — usually a smartphone — into usable electrical power. Every NFC link is built on inductive coupling between two small antenna coils, and a passive NFC device sitting in that field can do two things at once: exchange data and draw energy (near-field communication standards, ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 14443). A battery-free lock pushes the second capability to its logical end. Th
