As homes and businesses increasingly prioritize security, smart locks have emerged as a cornerstone of modern access control. These devices go beyond traditional keyless entry, integrating wireless connectivity, mobile app control, and biometric authentication to deliver seamless and secure user experiences. While many current systems rely on separate doorbell cameras for visual verification, a new generation of video smart locks is redefining the category—merging camera and lock into a single, intelligent device.
These integrated solutions offer more than just convenience. They enable remote monitoring, real-time access logs, and tamper alerts, empowering users to manage property security from anywhere in the world. Whether enhancing accessibility or supporting privacy through edge-based image processing, video smart locks represent a leap forward in both functionality and peace of mind.
Key considerations for selecting image sensors for video smart locks
Video smart locks depend on high image quality as the accuracy of the follow-through actions affect safety and property loss. There is considerable artificial intelligence (AI)/ machine learning (ML) infused into these products and the features they offer. Poor image quality could also result in overworking process engines that could drain power and delay operations.
Optimized resolution is also important so that there are enough details available in the captured image for the machine to distinguish the features of the person and take suitable action. Smaller resolutions lack details and may result in confusion in recognizing people/objects.
Smart locks are usually powered by batteries, as bringing an electrical power supply to the lock region would be impractical and mostly impossible. Low power consuming devices/systems are highly desirable for longest battery charge cycles and reliable operation without any downtime.
Smart locks have very defined real estate. They need to be compact, with functions that fundamentally include the locking mechanism and the doorbell camera. With a multitude of sensors, a processing engine, connectivity and a battery pack, this is a loaded electronic system today. It is imperative that all of these are in a highly optimized design not only in functionality and reliability but also form factor.
Hyperlux LP Image Sensors
The Hyperlux™ LP image sensor family is architected and designed for ultra-low power consumption. The AR0544 and AR0830 product lines which have all the three color filter array (CFA) variants – Mono, RGB and RGB-IR. The silicon and pixel architecture are tailored for superior image quality during day and night, thereby minimizing the need for high power IR LEDs. Features like Wake-on-Motion (WoM) with configurable regions of interest, trigger modes, and natively ultra-low power consumption help conserve battery power for the longest duration of operation on a single charge/replacement. This minimizes the power consumed by the smart lock system and reduces the BoM cost significantly.
The RGB-IR variant provides an easy means to realize a 1 MP or 2 MP IR image which provides substantial data for the depth — the ideal choice for smart locks with integrated IR pixels. The addition of IR pixels in the image sensor can remove this possibility of spoofing with a 2D photograph. Using a structured light scan of the object, the contour variations can be recognized for depth, thereby constructing a 3D map which also helps to detect the liveness of the object.
An additional benefit of such an image sensor is the availability of the IR data during normal operation that can be used to remove the IR bleed that inevitably happens as the smart locks face the outdoor environment. This provides a high-fidelity image and a true representation of the scene.
Smart Lock Reference Design
To enable the next-gen smart lock, onsemi has been working together with SoC/FPGA OEMs. In collaboration with AMD and MakarenaLabs, a hybrid 2D/3D smart lock reference design is available, using the AR0830 image sensor from onsemi. The RGB-IR image sensor can capture both 2D and 3D data that feed into processing/ML engines to enable face detection and face recognition.
The 2D data is fed into AI models to analyze when a human face is present and can verify with the database if the person is an authorized user. The 3D image is the key to determine if a real person is standing in front of a camera to avoid potential spoofing with a 2D image.
The IR 3D data from the AR0830 and the VCSEL projector is used to build a point cloud of the real human face that helps with 3D face reconstruction. Only if both 2D and 3D info are verified, the door will be unlocked.
The reference design provides a quick path to implement a smart lock for development purposes before committing resources for production. onsemi’s image sensors are readily enabled with the hardware and software needed to design these smart locks.
Smart locks are evolving into a critical component of the smart ecosystem for home and business, blending security, technology, and user experience into a single, intelligent solution. As biometric authentication becomes more accurate and accessible, smart locks are growing their adoption as the next-generation security infrastructure. The image sensors play a critical role in capturing data necessary for AI-driven facial/behavioral detection and recognition.
Lock providers can now focus on their differentiating values at the application level leveraging the features available from the image sensors, the SoCs/FPGAs and AI/ML models that bring intelligence into their solutions. Learn more about this smart lock reference design with all the hardware and software requirements. Contact us about getting the complete AR0830 hardware development kits along with the DevSuite software development platform to help you with system evaluation.
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