Automated dorm room door

posted Jul 6th 2009 6:25am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: home hacks, iphone hacks

[Chris] wrote in to tell us about this project he did while living in the dorms. He built a system to automate his dorm room door. It handles unlocking and opening/closing the door via iPhone, secret knock, and even the key. The lock/knob portion is handled by a servo while the opening/closing action is hydraulic. After living with it for a year, he says that it never gets old, but there were a few bugs. Apparently it would randomly open in the middle of the night sometimes. If you’re interested in doing something like this, but not damaging the door, maybe you should check out the RFID dorm door lock project.

Comments [24]

tagged: app, door, dorm, lock

Reader Comments

A solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Posted at 7:08 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by George

Hmm driving a car instead of walking, a soloution to a problem that doesn’t exist!

george obviously hasn’t tried opening a door whilst sitting in a wheelchair.

attitudes like that would have never got man to the moon.

I like this mod, it needs to be intergrated into the door, like intergrated door closers.

Posted at 7:27 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by grovenstien

nice hack, college dormitories are great places for this kind of silliness

Posted at 7:47 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by anon

george, sure a problem existed. the problem was that the door wasn’t cool enough. problem solved!

Posted at 8:05 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by andrew

My ra would not have allowed that…
pretty sweet though

Posted at 8:08 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by Entropy

Great hack, not sure about the secret knock though.

“Apparently it would randomly open in the middle of the night sometimes”
I detect the work of drunk, secret-knock-knowing, neighbours.

Posted at 8:10 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by rawls

looked pneumatic, not hydraulic.

Posted at 9:24 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by Mark K

mark k: he says he used water from the tap as the fluid, so it must be hydraulic.

Posted at 9:56 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by andrew

@mark k

looks pneumatic, but its not. you can see the water hoses connected to the piston and hear the sound of water moving while it was closing.
definitely hydraulic, just not hydraulic oil like a back hoe.

Posted at 9:59 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by Doug

I am sure water hydraulics are not considered lightly, he probably knows that a oil leak would definitely not make an RA happy. Secret knock is fun sounding, but security on such a thing is non-existent. And the point of going to school now is to teach people how to solve problems four years from now that we do not even know exist, much less how to fix. Anything trivial to you is not trivial to an engineer. Our jobs are on the line if a bolt fails and a floor crashes to the ground, killing everyone underneath. Because of this, the reasons engineers think nothing is trivial, is the reason you have no problems.

Posted at 10:21 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by greycode

this is cool… and im guessing mr.A solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. has never tried to open a door with arms loaded with books and gear and unhelpful roommates…

Posted at 10:50 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by teck monkey

That might even be impressive to whoever he comes stumbling back to his room with.

Posted at 10:55 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by RenardHound

I don’t think the secret knock is much of a secret any more… but it looks pretty cool besides that.

Posted at 11:06 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by Jack

Ah, sloth. the leading cause of doing too much work.

Posted at 11:38 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by Dean Putney

thats what i was thinkin jack. not too smart showin your “secret” knock on a video to the rest of the world!

Posted at 11:40 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by jayjam

mr. “A solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.” never need to open doors. he just remove unstack his stone barrier to his cave each time he needs to leave.

Posted at 11:54 am on Jul 6th, 2009 by yu

Maybe a solution to the secret knock staying secret would be a rotating algorithm based on the date. You would have to keep track of the date in order to know what todays knock would be but anyone overhearing the knock would not be able to use it to gain entry after it changed for the next day. Just a thought.

Posted at 2:07 pm on Jul 6th, 2009 by Kris

“Apparently it would randomly open in the middle of the night sometimes.” … A very undesirable feature when you live in the dorms; unless you’re into surprises! =]

Posted at 3:12 pm on Jul 6th, 2009 by tehnthdegree

Holy s***, I went to school with Chris, its awesome to see him getting recognized out there! I can’t wait to tell Mr. Hawley, the physics teacher, he’s gonna flip!

Posted at 4:10 pm on Jul 6th, 2009 by Inuyasha10121

why is it always the MIT kids that build crazy dorm room shit??

Posted at 6:57 pm on Jul 6th, 2009 by jake

@RenardHound “That might even be impressive to whoever he comes stumbling back to his room with.”

My girlfriend agrees! (only needed that trick once).

Also, the door has been bequeathed to a freshman, so she’ll have to make her own secret knock now!

Posted at 11:36 pm on Jul 6th, 2009 by chris

That is sweet – I was going to do this in my room, but we cannot mount anything on our walls unless we use blue masking tape. Otherwise we can get fined $200 for stripped paint lol.

Posted at 12:18 pm on Jul 7th, 2009 by Mike

But what happens when the power goes out. Does the hydraulic not having power cause it to be unopenable?

Posted at 10:02 pm on Aug 2nd, 2009 by Amatoc Industries

the computer/solenoids/servo is on a battery backup! So it shouldn’t be okay…when the water goes out though the door won’t open, but the servo will still open the handle, and there’s a bleed valve on the door so if you force it will slowly open. with the bleed valve closed the door can be pretty strong too!

Posted at 1:48 am on Aug 3rd, 2009 by chris

Automated dorm room door

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