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Hekate - The Goddess of Safes

Many students complain that they do not have somewhere safe to lock their valuable items, so we introduce Hekate, an electronic safe activated with your Penncard or a button pattern password.

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Inspiration

As students we always hear horror stories of valuables being stolen. With the growing use of expensive technology such as MacBooks and iPads in college we felt that we needed to create something to protect the everyday student. From that, Hecate was born.

What it does

Hecate is a safe that can be opened by one’s personal Penn ID card using an RFID reader. We understand that cards get lost all the time and as such we have created a insurance mechanism- a button pattern lock on the back of the safe.

How we built it

The way we implemented a button pattern lock and a RFID reader to open the same lock was by using a relay module. The relay module allowed us to create an ‘or’ system where we could use the RFID reader or the Buttons if required. We allowed the RFID reader to open the lock via a penn card by coding it so that we set the ‘access granted’ to the personal RFID values for the penn card by viewing it on the serial monitor.

Challenges we ran into

Allowing the buttons and the RFID to open the lock individually was very doable however when we came to the task of creating a system where they both could open the lock posed a difficult task. We did a lot of research before deciding on a relay module and luckily the first time we implemented a relay module it worked out.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We are most proud of the fact that we created something using a tool which penn students use everyday and using the ideas of IOT to implement that idea.

What I learned

We significantly improved our coding skills and understanding of electrical circuits. We also experienced first hand, that things tend to not work when you want them to.

What's next for Hekate - The Goddess of Safes

Now that the Goddess of Safes has been crafted in the forges of Hephaestus, the one thing that remains is for us to make things look neater and better organize the wiring and circuitry. Afterwards it's mass production and market domination :)

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