Secret Bookshelf Door Uses Hidden Fingerprint Scanner

May 30, 2023 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

What is it that compels us about a secret door? It’s almost as if the door itself and the promise of mystery is more exciting than whatever could lay beyond. In any case, [Scott Monaghan] is a lover of the form, and built his own secret door hidden in a bookshelf, as all good secret doors should be.

The door is activated by pulling down on the correct book. This then reveals a fingerprint scanner. Upon presenting the right digit, the door will elegantly swing open to reveal the room beyond. Secret door experts will note there’s an obvious tell due to the light spilling through the cracks, however [Scott] reports that the finishing stages of the build solved this issue. The door was also fitted with a manual release for easier daily use.

Details are light, but the basics are all there. Really all you need is a cheap hardware store door opener, a secret activation lever or authentication method, and a well-hinged bookcase to achieve this feat yourself. We’ve seen some other great secret doors before, too. Video after the break.

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Revolving Doors Aren’t Just Annoying, They’re Energy Saving Too

June 9, 2022 by Lewin Day 43 Comments

While most of us have been content with swing and sliding doors for the vast majority of our needs around the home, the revolving door remains popular in a wide variety of contexts.

It’s a confounding contraption that always feels ready to snatch and ensnare the unwary user. However, these doors do have certain benefits that have allowed them to retain popularity in many public buildings around the world. Let’s dive in to why below.

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Making A Metal Hand Doorknob

September 24, 2021 by Lewin Day 23 Comments

Regular doorknobs are widely reviled for their bare simplicity, but by and large society has so many other problems that it never really comes up in day to day conversation. Fear not, however, for [Matthew] has created something altogether more special: a doorknob in the shape of his own outstretched hand.

The build was inspired by a similar doorknob at the WNDR museum in Chicago, and its one you can recreate yourself, too. It’s achieved through a multi-stage mold making process. [Matthew]’s first step was to make a flexible mold of his hand using Perfect Mold alginate material to do so.

Once solidified, [Matthew’s] hand was removed and the mold filled with wax. The wax duplicate of [Matthew]’s hand was then used to create an investment plaster mold for casting metal. Vents were added in the end of each fingertip in the mold to allow molten metal to effectively fill the entire cavity.

Once the investment mold was solid and dry, the wax was melted out and it was ready for casting. A propane furnace was used to melt the casting metal and fill the mold using a simple gravity casting method. [Matthew] ended up making two hands, one in aluminium and one in copper. Some cleanup with grinders and a wire wheel, and a replica of [Matthew]’s hand was in his hands!

The finished piece looks great attached to a door knob, and we’re sure it’s quite satisfying shaking hands with your hefty metal self every time you open the door. It bears noting that the same techniques can be used with 3D printing, too! If you pull off your own great home casting project, be sure to drop us a line. Video after the break.

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Physical Security Hack Chat With Deviant Ollam

June 1, 2020 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

Join us on Wednesday, June 3 at noon Pacific for the Physical Security Hack Chat with Deviant Ollam!

You can throw as many resources as possible into securing your systems — patch every vulnerability religiously, train all your users, monitor their traffic, eliminate every conceivable side-channel attack, or even totally air-gap your system — but it all amounts to exactly zero if somebody leaves a door propped open. Or if you’ve put a $5 padlock on a critical gate. Or if your RFID access control system is easily hacked. Ignore details like that and you’re just inviting trouble in.

Once the black-hats are on the inside, their job becomes orders of magnitude easier. Nothing beats hands-on access to a system when it comes to compromising it, and even if the attacker isn’t directly interfacing with your system, having him or her on the inside makes social engineering attacks that much simpler. System security starts with physical security, and physical security starts with understanding how to keep the doors locked.

To help us dig into that, Deviant Ollam will stop by the Hack Chat. Deviant works as a physical security consultant and he’s a fixture on the security con circuit and denizen of many lockpicking villages. He’s well-versed in what it takes to keep hardware safe from unauthorized visits or to keep it from disappearing entirely. From CCTV systems to elevator hacks to just about every possible way to defeat a locked door, Deviant has quite a bag of physical security tricks, and he’ll share his insights on keeping stuff safe in a dangerous world.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, June 3 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

A Simple App Controlled Door Lock

January 16, 2020 by Gerrit Coetzee 9 Comments

[Adnan.R.Khan] had a sliding door latch plus an Arduino, and hacked together this cool but simple app controlled door lock.

Mechanically the lock consists of a Solarbotics GM3 motor, some Meccano, and a servo arm. A string is tied between two pulleys and looped around the slide of a barrel latch. When the motor moves back and forth it’s enough to slide the lock in and out. Electronically an Arduino and a Bluetooth module provide the electronics. The system runs from a 9V battery, and we’re interested to know whether there were any tricks pulled to make the battery last.

The system’s software is a simple program built in MIT App Inventor. Still, it’s pretty cool that you can get functionally close to a production product with parts that are very much lying around. It also makes us think of maybe keeping our childhood Meccano sets a little closer to the bench!

Automating Your Door For $20

January 11, 2018 by Al Williams 12 Comments

We love the doors on Star Trek’s Enterprise. We should have known they were human-operated though because they were too smart. They would wait for people, or fail to open when someone was thrown against them during a fight. [SieuweE] has a much more practical automatic door that he calls ArduDoor.

You might guess from the name it uses an Arduino. It also uses a windshield wiper motor which is perfect since it is high-torque and low speed. You might even be able to pick one up for little or nothing if you frequent the junkyards.

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Jeep Wrangler Dome Light Mod

December 3, 2017 by James Hobson 42 Comments

If you’re the owner of a Jeep Wrangler, you may have experienced some frustration with the interior dome light. For those not in the know, removing the doors on a warm day or for a bit of fun can lead to a dead battery. This happens because the Wrangler’s light stays on unless the fuse or light are removed, or a custom shutoff switch is added — at the expense of troublesome wiring. You could say it’s a Jeep Thing. [Tim Nummy] offers a solution with minimal modifications.

First off, pop the switch out of the door and set it aside. As a replacement, [Tim Nummy] has managed to salvage a door light switch from an old Mercedes. In addition to the same momentary-off function as the Wrangler’s stock switch, the button on the new one can be pulled out and locked for a secondary off position. Many machines and appliances use this same type of switch in their safety interlocks as a service position. [Tim] didn’t want to cut apart the wiring in the Wrangler in case something goes awry down the line, so for now he has filed down some spade terminals to slot into the Mercedes plug. He’s also 3D printed a nut to nicely secure the new switch in place. Check out his how-to video after the break!

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