We have a pretty good guess where [Krizbleen] hides away any seasonal presents for his family: behind his shiny new secret library door. An experienced woodworker, [Krizbleen] was in the process of finishing the attic in his home when he decided to take advantage of the chimney’s otherwise annoying placement in front of his soon-to-be office. He built a false wall in front of the central chimney obstacle and placed a TV in the middle of the wall (directly in front of the chimney) flanked on either side by a bookcase.
If you touch the secret book or knock out the secret sequence, however, the right-side bookcase slides gently out of the way to reveal [Krizbleen’s] home office. Behind the scenes, a heavy duty linear actuator pushes or pulls the door as necessary, onto which [Krizbleen] expertly mounted the bookcase with some 2″ caster wheels. The actuator expects +24V or -24V to send it moving in one of its two directions, so the Arduino Uno needed a couple of relays to handle the voltage difference.
The effort spent here was immense, but the result is seamless. After borrowing a knock-detection script and hooking up a secondary access button concealed in a book, [Krizbleen] had the secret door he’d always wanted: albeit maybe a bit slow to open and close. You can see a video of its operation below.
Not a secret any more :-)
Now we just have to find out where he lives…
Super Mega Cool
Someone’s been watching too many Scooby-Doo reruns… Seriously cool workmanship though. Smooth and fairly quiet operation.
is that a bong at the end of your desk? oops!
Looks like a lava lamp to me.
Good way to disquise one!
He’s a smart guy as well as an excellent woodworker. Retracting sideways into the wall like that eliminates one of the main problems with secret doors. If they pivot out into a room, they leave revealing marks on the floor or carpet.
doubles as a panic room.
Nice, but I doubt it will pass any house safety codes. Perfect trap for a fire accident, especially with so much electronics in there.
If that’s a lot of electronics then don’t look in my office.
Good point, why not make the left shelf a manually activated door that only opens from inside the office, no power, no problem,
In the comments of his Instructable he explains that the office has a fire escape ladder at the window and that the sliding door can be easily detached from the mechanism and manually pushed out of the way.
http://youtu.be/Bt9zSfinwFA
He should have a bust of Shakespeare.
Hasn’t HaD covered a bust of Shakespeare with a hinge and a secret button?
QUICK, To the bat cave!
I really like that,
thats cool
Quick!…or, well, kinda quick, I mean, if you wanna make a sandwich or something the door will be done by then…
Seriously, cool. On my hack list for “some day”.
If he didn’t have the angled ceiling, would it be possible to suspend the bookcase from something like a garage door rail? Avoid the chance of screwing up the floor at all
The “hidden” room could use a Murphy bed…