[jasondclinton]

Another product with a much longer time horizon is those electronic dial pads on apartment buildings and entry gates: https://www.google.com/search?q=apartment+door+dial+pad&tbm=...

These things are running on technology from the late 90's virtually unchanged. Even the most advanced ones are low end silicon with terrible thermal designs and horrible user interfaces (scrolling through pages of residents on a bad monochrome display one line at a time). Nothing competes with them. They have no high-failure parts and can last for decades. (And some have.)

[alias_neo]

Funny you mention thermal design. I thought it was BS at first, but last summer, our intercom system went down, which also included door control, so you had to go down several floors to let someone in who had no way (without out-of-band communication) to tell you they were there (postman anyone?).

It took them months to fix it (this is a new build block in London) and when they finally did, it was a simple reboot.

The engineer told me it had overheated in the summer sun. I mean, really? I found this hard to believe this piece of equipment designed to be outdoors, overheated in British sun.

I was furious, I could have rebooted the damn thing myself and saved us months of pain if I'd had access.

[mab122]

I hate those, they mount them even on brand new buildings where even elevetors have screens and touchpanel buttons.

[catalogia]

> elevetors have screens and touchpanel buttons.

I've not encountered systems like this. How do they handle accessibility for the blind? Are the physical buttons still present?

[Nextgrid]

Elevator screens aren't much better either. The hardware has lots of potential but it is held back by often crappy software.

[modeless]

These things are the worst. There was a YC startup that was building hardware to hack into these and make them smart but it seems like they have pivoted to pure software: https://www.doorport.com/