Xthings has spent more than a decade building smart access hardware that tries to feel “invisible”: you walk up, authenticate, and the door behaves like it understands intent. In this interview, the focus is on stacking multiple credentials—PIN, NFC tap, fingerprint, and now proximity plus computer vision—while keeping broad compatibility with mainstream ecosystems like Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. https://xthings.com/
A big theme is proximity done properly. Their ultra-wideband (UWB) smart lock uses ranging to judge distance and approach direction, so it can unlock when you actually reach for the handle, not just because you walked nearby with a UWB phone. If you don’t have UWB, the same lineup supports NFC tap, keypad code entry, and (on some models) a physical key override, plus digital key sharing for households and small teams at the door.
For higher assurance, Xthings is pushing multi-modal biometrics with Ultraloq Bolt Sense: palm-vein authentication plus 3D facial recognition. Palm vein ID typically uses near-infrared imaging to read sub-surface vascular patterns, which can work even with wet hands or in low light, and it’s generally harder to spoof than many surface-level biometrics. The conversation also touches standards-first thinking, with newer locks like the Latch 7 Pro leaning on Matter over Thread for local control and Aliro-style interoperability for access credentials, while still offering familiar fallbacks.
The “Urban Guardian” concept stretches the same identity + sensing ideas into public space hardware. It’s presented as a self-contained safety node for streets or corporate campuses: solar panels charging an internal battery, 4G connectivity, 360° cameras, lighting, and an SOS/info interface, without trenching cables or deep backend integration. Practical touches like MagSafe-style wireless charging suggest it’s designed for real-world dwell time, not just passive monitoring at night.
On the monitoring side, the Ulticam camera line adds Matter-ready devices and Google Gemini-powered video understanding, shifting alerts from generic motion to more contextual summaries (like recognizing a delivery event). The lineup is positioned around details like 4K/HDR capture, wide field of view, two-way audio, and common installs such as PoE, alongside variants that emphasize floodlighting or longer-range wireless options. Filmed at CES Las Vegas 2026, the story here is less about one gadget and more about how access control, identity, and AI video context can converge into one cross-platform stack.
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