Level Home emerges from stealth with $71M from Walmart and Lennar and a new take on the smart lock

As companies like Google, Amazon and Apple hone their strategies to build the brain that helps you use the smart home of the future, where a new wave of internet-enabled appliances, climate and security systems and other connected objects can be connected and controlled through their hubs, a new smart home startup called Level Home is emerging from stealth today with a big packet of funding, a sales deal, and a hope of bringing something new to the table, by focusing on ways of rethinking old things you own already, starting with the lock on your front door. Level Home says you can install the Lock yourself using a basic number-two screwdriver -- "the most common tool in the American home", says CEO and co-founder John Martin -- or you can engage Level Home's installation partner, HelloTech, to set it up.