Innovation 102

Perhaps many people have this kind of experiences:

• Forgot to lock the car that they thought they have locked it before going for a dinner or movie .  And after an hour or two when they got back, all the valuable things inside the car were stolen.
• From then on they will never trust themselves if they have locked the lock.  They become paranoid about that if they have locked the locks or not.  So even when they clearly remember they left their car locked, but they still doubt themselves if they have locked it.  And the pathetic result is, no matter how far they already left, they still want to go back and check.
• This paranoid feeling extends to other aspect of life about locks.  They will want to check if their homes, their offices, their lockers, etc., are locked after they already left for quite some time. 

The above situations should be very common especially in a big city where locks are essential, right?  Locks are often locked unconsciously especially when there are interruption during the locking moment, such as a phone call, friend’s talking, something is chasing, in a hurry, getting to a new place, etc.

Going back to check the lock condition is always worthwhile when possible as the result of the leaving doors unlock could be devastating and the lost and damages may not be recoverable.  However, the probability of bad things happen is in fact not very high, it is really a waste of time and effort to go back every time to check.

Based on this, this idea was developed long ago: a key (with the lock) with an indicator on it to show the status of the lock.  For a mechanical lock, just some not very complicated mechanism could already make the key got this indication.  

Mechanical Indicator

For remote control key system, it will be a matter of electronic feedback system designing into the remote control and the indication will be handy. 

Electronic Indication

With the lock status indication (for example, unlocked - red, locked - green), the keys owner will only have to check the keys in order to know the condition of the lock and that will not require them to walk back from far away to check the lock again. 

Already had discussed these designs with some lock manufacturers, but at time they were not interested.  The exact reasons were unknown, but there was a worry that there might have some legal problems if the indicator on the keys is not 100% fool proof.  Some users may claim the lock company for misleading information and cause them damages or lost.  However, this could always be taken care of by a disclaimer.

Anyway, this is still the invention not be realized yet.

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