ECE 110/120 Honors Lab Section : IoT Currency Safe

TLDR: ^

Introduction

Statement of Purpose: Safes can be made better using hardware; for example, they could count money in a special compartment, weigh the contents, include a GPS module if lost/stolen, tell you how much money you have on your debit card, etc. Our goal is to build a safe with several features that takes advantage of hardware and software to provide smarter features, and be able to be tracked/locked/unlocked remotely while keeping track of contents. In order to make it secure to software hacking, we're attempting to make it independent of wifi. It can be used as a secure container as well, not necessarily just a safe. If kept in a dark space, the safe should also alert the user if light hits it, and take a noise/video record. Should all fail, an "E-Stop" just locks the whole thing down, allowing one to protect anything inside in emergency.

Background Research: The idea was come up with when one of us found a lost wallet. Originally, we wanted to attempt to fill all the features on a wallet, but it was way too tiny to hold anything but the smallest features. The Raspberry Pi will allow us to set up network capabilities, and it can interface with an Arduino (which controls the electrical and sensor systems). Meanwhile, we can use an LTE to rely less on wifi connections. Finally, a simplistic app must be built to facilitate remote locking, tracking, and notifying. Python is the easiest language to facilitate these features.

Design Details

1. System Overview
   
   Provide descriptions to your block diagram and flow chart. State the purpose of each block. 

Flowchart:

The sensors will be connected to the Arduino. This data will be processed by the arduino and, if necessary, sent to the Raspberry Pi. A power supply will be connected to both the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. There will be a user input system on the container itself, possibly a small keyboard. A display will be included to give the information that the user wants. A remote app will be made to set up security features, use the location tracker, and remotely access information from the container. 

Parts Needed

Breadboard

Container

Raspberry Pi

Arduino

Pressure Sensors for Credit Card Pockets

Analog Displays

GPS Module (Needs research)

Electronic Lock

Motion Sensor

E-Stop button

Light Sensors

Microphone and Audio Storage (Cheap)

Basic hamost difficutrdware

Possible Challenges

The software portion, especially pulling off a reliable connection and secure enough app, will be rough. On top of that, there is a ton of hardware to manage. By farthest, the debit card credit display will be the most difficult, just because it is inherently difficult to access the information without user input. In addition to that, pressure sensors might be a tad difficult to make work in pockets. Finally, we are not exactly making a safe but a container, so even with all the hardware we're trying to minimize size.

Srijan Chakraborty (srijanc2, ECE 110), Kristopher Koepcke (koepcke2, ECE 120)