HerLocked

Inspiration

Here at Penn, students are continuously leaving their doors propped open with their deadbolts due to the recent lock update. Their rooms become easy targets for theft.

In even more dangerous situations, women across the country are being assaulted at their doors as they fumble for their keys.

What it does

HerLocked is a device easily installable into a pre-existing lock system, which allows opening and closing of a lock via a smartphone connected through bluetooth. HerLocked works by sitting in the lockset, not affecting the locking mechanism when the "lock" button is activated. When "unlock" is pressed, the linear actuator pushes the latch inwards, preventing the latch from entering the lockset. The lock/unlock mechanism can be accessed with the smartphone app, so the door can be locked and unlocked without fumbling with keys.

How I built it

Made a smartphone app that used bluetooth to connect to Arduino BLE Shield.

Challenges I ran into

We currently do not have enough voltage from the Arduino to run the linear actuator and require an lm741 operational amplifier in order to power it.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We managed to connect the mobile app to the BLE shield using a bluetooth connection.

What I learned

Hardware sometimes require multiple re-starts to work.

What's next for HerLocked

We would like to create a secure database for HerLocked, such that users can remain connected to multiple locks at once from their device.

In addition, we could like to attach a touch screen that runs the app and can be attached inside the door. Once someone enters her house, she can simply press lock without pulling out her phone again.

We would also like to implement a timer feature, such that the lock can be set to unlock for a given period of time and then automatically re-lock.