Does the 4-AA batteries actually last a full year? I'm not sure how those batteries can maintain a steady wifi connection and survive for a full year. The lowest power wifi chips I know still draw 40mA in RX mode.
Continuously connected? No. We'd last about two weeks.
We poll infrequently during off hours and more frequently when people are likely to be coming and going. Knocking also wakes it up.
Bluetooth 4.0 gets us the rest of the way. It's instant for iPhone 4s and 5 users and we should have rudimentary support for the Android devices with BT4 by March.
So what happens when a packet is sent when you're in sleep mode? Does the device have to renegotiate the connection when waking up?
What if you sold a separate device that plugged in the wall and had a constant wifi connection, then used BT4 for communicating with the lock powered by 4xAA? Then you wouldn't even need wifi on the lock.
Also, why an arduino mega? Are you using that many I/O pins or is it because your code needs the 256KB of flash?
I don't think they are using an Arduino Mega. They are using the same processor that an Arduino uses which is the Atmel ATmega, which is a very common processor for microcontrollers.
I'm guessing you're not accustomed to the arduino parlance. Everyone knows arduino uses an atmel atmega uC, but when you say "arduino mega" it means something specific. I have around 5 different models of atmega chips at home that I use with the arduino.
In the video they said they were using a mega, and you can tell from the picture that the atmel chip is a surface mount similar to the 2560. All the arduino chips use some kind of atmega variant, but the arduino mega refers to the atmega1280 or the atmega2560. The most common arduino chip is the atmega328p.
The atmega series is fairly broad. The arduinos only use a subset of the atmega series. "mega" is probably a bit confusing, but if you say "arduino mega" it only refers to one or two specific chips -- the old "arduino mega" used the atmega1280 while the newer model uses the atmega2560.
