What’s an Apple Watch good for? How about unlocking doors with just a tap on an app? We figured out how do something no one else has done for under 150 bucks, using standard door-strike hardware, our custom app, and a tiny RFduino microcontroller. In this Weekend Project we’ll show you exactly how to do it.
We started this project to help solve a real-world problem: prevent our employees from being locked out of our office. Our security system automatically locks the doors outside of normal business hours. If someone steps out of the office without their security card or keyfob, they’re locked out. When this happens, people use their phone to call or email people at the office to let them back in. This showed us that people may forget their security card — but they don’t forget their phone. With this insight, we set out to create an mobile app that would serve as a virtual security card. The Apple Watch would make this even more convenient, and since Apple Watch apps are extensions of iPhone apps, we created a bundle that includes both apps.
Beyond the convenience of allowing people to securely open doors with the Apple Watch, we had three main goals for this project:
- Leverage our existing security system: integrate with the security system and electronic doors we currently have in place.
- Extend our existing system: augment what we have by adding additional electronically secure doors.
- Learn how to best use the Apple Watch: this is a new platform, and it will take us (and others) a while to understand the most natural way to interact with it.
For more detail: Make an Apple Watch Door Unlocker
