As with most products, over time there is an evolution as different customer needs are identified and solutions developed.

The original key safe was developed to mount on a wall, the wall mounted Keysafe.

Although this was a great success practically from the outset and many variation on the original Supra S5 keysafe came to the market, there soon developed a need to have a keysafe that did not have to be installed permanently. This need was mainly driven by the Estate Agencies in thew US who wanted a key to be available at each property suring the selling process, but then to be able to remove it when the property was sold. With the wall key safe although it can be removed fairly simply once the door is opened by removing the 4 screws which attach it to a wall, it still leaves some marks and the installation requires tools such as a drill etc.

The solution was the key safe portable. The keysafe have a padlock style design whereby when the safe is open the hook of the padlock can be opened otherwise it acts as a strong padlock with a compartment large enough to hold keys.

There is a range now of these padlock style keysafe including models from Masterlock and Supra.

In recent year two new innovations have arrived. The first is the key safe magnetic.

The key safe magnetic fulfills the need for a key safe for people who are unable to installed a wall key safe or a padlock style key safe. This might be because they live in an apartment building and do not have the ability to fix a key safe to the outside of the building or many other reasons.

Whatever the reason for not not being able to use traditional safes, Supra have added a magnetic keysafe to their "stor-a-key" range to fulfill this need. Whilst not as robust as the traditional models, the key safe magnetic is designed to be concealed usually in a metal post box. The key safe magnetic has a 3 digit wheel combination and a very strong magnet which will attach to any metal surface. The key safe magnetic also comes with a metal fixing plate that can be attached to other surfaces (such as wood) which will then act as a fixing surface for the magnets on the key safe magnetic itself.

For storing a spare key in a letter box without making any permanent fixing, this keysafe magnetic leads the market.

The latest innovation is the key safe auto. This keysafe is designed to fulfill a different need, that of protecting your car keys rather than house keys. To install the key safe simply lower the car window, hook the key safe auto over the window and close the window. The safe is solidly attached to the vehicle and you no longer need to take your keys with you when you leave the car.

So why do you need a key safe for your car ? Most of us simply get out of the car and take the keys with us, so why this innovation. Well there are two main reasons :

Many commercial enterprises from haulage firms to building firms to garages require car keys to be distributed between employees. Imagine a building firm with heavy equipment such as JCB digging machines which are left on site overnight. Who, at the end of each day is responsible for the keys ? What if that person is ill the following day ? Attaching a key safe to the vehicle at the end of the working day ensure the key is available the sollowing day.

If someone is going to the shops or to visit family, then there is no need at all for a key management solution. If, however you are off for a days paddle boarding or rafting do you want to take your keys with you especially as water might damage the electronics with in the key. If you are off skiing with the family, wouldnt it be easier to leave the keys with the car ? This would allow anyone who got back early to change out of their boots without waiting in the cold.

There are many, many situations where a key safe auto could make your life a little bit easier, and at the end of the day that is what a keysafe is designed to do !

Since its inception, the devolpment of the keysafe has been true to one particular requirement ... keep it simple !

The keysafe was originally developed as a purely mechanical device, and almost every model from every manufacturer has stayed true to this design. There are one or two models which now incorporate batteries but these tend to be only in order to light the keys and do not impact on the mechanical mechanism to open or shut the safe.

The reason for this is simple. A keysafe is designed to be used daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly. The keysafe waits until it is needed ... but then must work. If a keysafe with a battery had not had its batteries changed for several months and because of this would not open when required, then it would not be a very reliable keysafe. Likewise a keysafe attached to the mains would not only be much harder to install (possibly requiring a professional electricial which would vastly increase the installation costs) but would it work during a power outage ? Again a keysafe that did not work when it was needed is of limited use.

While the simple solution is not always the best solution, sometimes it is. The keysafe has undergone various mdifications in the last 50 or so years but at its core, the simple key box is what it remains.

School age children frequently carry house keys with them, so that they can enter their home after school. It maybe that they need the keys everyday or once in a while if their parents are late back from work or have an appointment or suchlike.

Whilst children who need to use their house key every day tend to be very organised in making sure they have their key with them at all times, our experience with children who ocassionally need to use their house key is very different. School children frequently have to take different bags with them to school depending upon whether they have sports or not and can easily leave keys in one bag while they take another.

Whatever the reason for the confusion, school children find it very easy to not take their keys with them from time to time. This of course only becomes a problem when the keys are needed but at that moment for most parents it becomes a very big problem !

Whether your child (or children) needs to have access to a house key every day, on a regular basis or only in emergencies ... when the key is needed it has to be available. How do you achieve this ?

The problems with children looking after their house keys are not new. With my own children it was a constant problem until I stopped asking why they couldn't take their keys with them everyday, and made sure the keys were available for them when they arrived at the house.

My eldest son was a classic example of the problem with teenagers and house keys. He assured me on many occassions that he always had his keys with him when he went to school, yet nearly half of all of the times when he needed to use his keys after returning from school to find the house empty, that was the only day when he left this keys in another bag or another jacket.

But the solution was simple, and not expensive. Rather than give each of the children a key which they forgot to take with them on a regular basis, I installed a Supra S5 keysafe and put a house key within it. I then gave all of the children the code to open the keysafe, and made each of them practice opening the keysafe to make sure they could operate it correctly. At the time the youngest was around 9 years old and he managed to use the safe without any problems.

We have now had a keysafe on every house in which we have lived for nearly 15 years, and in that time we have made use of it on a very frequent basis. Not only have the children, although the eldest is now in his 20's !, used it on a very frequent basis, but so have I and others. For example, I frequently go to the uk for a days and if I take the train directly from my home, then I do not take my keys with me and rely on the keysafe to access the house when I return.

If I drive to one of the nearby stations and take the train from there (thus avoiding a 20 minute walk to the local station) then I now use the keysafe Auto to store my keys until my return. This new addition to the keysafe range fixes to the car in several seconds and gives exactly the same benefits of a standard keysafe except that it is fitted to the car window rather than a wall.

When I visit the UK I invariably stay at my parents home. It might as no surprise to divulge that I do not have a key to my parents house. Instead if I arrive and no one is at home, then I open their keysafe and open the front door with the key that is contained within. Many years ago I and my siblings each had our own keys but as none of live nearby it was difficult for any of us to remember to bring the key back to our home city when we returned. We therefore ended up in the same situation as with my own children in that we had a key, but with the journey back to the UK often involving various methods of travel, we simply forgot to bring the house key. Since the keysafe has been installed this is no longer an issue. We open the keysafe, take the key to open the door to the house, then return the key to the keysafe which acts as an emergency key, When we are in the house there is a spare key hanging on the key hook which is then available for as long as required. This means that te emergency key always stays in the safe, that we can have access when required then use a spare key for however long we stay. It is a system that works well.

I have given this a lot of thought over the years and .. I really struggle to think of any negatives associated with installing a keysafe.

As with all products you have to follow the installation advice and ensure that guidelines are followed. When installing a keysafe you should ensure that the fixings are as solid as possible and that they are suitable for the material to which the keysafe is attached. You should also ensure that location chosen is as discrete as possible and that the keysafe has the weather protection necessary for the site. Especially if the keysafe is to be used in the mountains or in cold climates, having a full cover for the keysafe will help prevent problems with ice and snow developing.

For the security code, most specialist recommend that you use a 4 to 6 digit combination. Using no combination, or a default combination such as one consisting of 4 zeros, will radically reduce the level of security. Also consider changing the code if you feel too many people have been given the code, especially if any of them no longer require access. No matter which keysafe you choose, you will be able t change the code relatively quickly as all keysafes are designed to have their security code changed simply and easily.

There are very few products in any sector of the market which reach their ultimate incarnation. That said it is difficult to imagine any fundamental changes that one could make to the current range of keysafes which would improve them.

One of the key selling points of the key safe is its simplicity. Whereas more and more products today are reaching for "smart" solutions, the fact that the keysafe is purely mechanical means that it is not dependent upon any sort of power source (which would be a major concern as a potential point of failure should batteries become exhausted or an area suffer a power outage), and is not interconnected with any other devices so that there is no possibility of a virus or hacker interfering with the product. This is important as the simplicity guarantees its availability and its security.

With current models the major variation in the product (apart from the wheel and push button combinations) is the size. If house keys or car keys were to change significantly meaning that they could no longer be accomodated in the space provided, then this could a problem for some of the smaller models, but as there are already a variety of sizes available on the market from the Supra Slimline to the Supra GE 500 Pro, the Masterlock 5304 XL and the Masterlock 5212 XL then there should be model on the market to suit all needs.

The current range consists of a large number of wall mounted safes, a range of padlock style safes and a smaller number of car window safes and magenetic safes.

One possible development that would be welcomed by many would be if it was possible to address the issue of creating a secure, fitted keysafe for those installations where attaching the safe to a wall using permanent fiyxings such as screws is not possible. At the moment the only solution is to use a magnetic safe but these offer significantly less security than the wall mounted models. Should there be a system developed which would allow the safe to be attached in another way (perhaps using a very strong glue that can be removed later,or a suction device that can only be controlled from the inside of the safe when it is open).

Eventually as our dependency on new technologies increases and our homes become smarter, the keysafe could be replaced by some sort of smart entry system to our homes. This could be in the form of a smart front door with a coded lock, possible the door could have finger print recognition or even some sort of access panel on the door could allow entry based on facial recognition software ... all of which are currently generally available on smartphones. Perhaps even the smartphone itself could provide the solution. An application which could be downloaded to the phone to use the capabilities already widely available could be adapted to the control of an entry system.

What ever the future, the simple basic requirement remains unchanged. With the mechanical key safe, we can simply tell people the code thus allowing them access until we decide to change the code. With smart technology people can be registered or unregistered as being allowed access but however smart it seems, all we would have done if to replicate exactly the functionality, albeit at a much much higher price, using technology.

There is also a much increased risk. We are all aware how interconnected the world has become and the internet of things is constantly sited as a way that people can gain access to personal information about us. Hacking an electronic system to gain physical access to our homes would be an obvious extrapolation of these fears. Also the more we rely on powered solutions to every problem, the more we create a problem should rthe power fail either due to a meterological event, a power outage caused by a fault in the power grid infrastructure or some other disaster natural or otherwise.

So in this brave new technological world what do you do when the power fails and you cant even get into your home ? You use the backup system of course ... you retrtieve the key from the mechanical keysafe and use the backup mechanical lock in the door .... simple !