How we helped develop Home Digilocks in Norway

A funny little Wednesday story for you all.

My guess is that you were not aware that Who Let The Dogs Out? helped develop digital home locks here in Oslo.

About one decade ago when digital home locks were still old fashioned keypads, I was contacted by the brother-in-law of a good friend.

Mike, it turned out, worked for one of the big home lock and alarm system providers. Thanks to advances in technology they were looking at developing a new type of digital home lock, a digilock.

It was very much still in the early development stages and Mike’s boss had tasked him with doing more field research.

Mike was exploring different industries which would benefit from easy access in and out of people’s homes without requiring a physical key.

Whilst eating dinner one night with my friend, she had mentioned that I ran a dog walking company. Mike’s internal brain cogs had quickly turned over and his eyes lit up. He asked if he could have my contact details.

Mike had the enviable task of joining me for pick ups, walk and drop offs to see the whole experience. In all honesty he only needed to join for the pickup… but he loved dogs and taking a morning away from the office and calling a Nature Walk “research” tempted him.

With every dog we picked up Mike took notes, examined the different entrance systems and door locks, and took some photos (whilst carefully ensuring that everything would be anonymous and not able to be identified).

I had also selected a good variation of houses and flats with different systems so as to keep Mike entertained and his boss happy with his “research”.

We then went on to have an amazing Adventure with a fun group of dogs up in Nordmarka.

When it came to dropping the dogs back home, I needed to remind Mike that he might want to take more notes, as by then he had clearly switched out of work mode.

Fast forward a few months and suddenly his company’s locks started appearing around Oslo. I would like to think that we played our little part in this developmental success.

A few years later and all the major players in the industry here in Norway had a similar product.

The funny part is also that until a few days ago I had completely forgotten this little story, lost in a plethora of random requests, and friends of Friends asking to join for Adventures to experience what we do.

So next time you punch your 6 digit digilock code in and manage to get in somewhere without a key or a fob, you can think of us.

Doggies: Poppy, Tiara, Tesla and Minttu