Open Sesame

[Z]iyan and [Z]achery from the Rochester Institute of Technology are an excited bunch. They came up with a way to open their apartment door with a series of coded taps on their TI Chronos Watch. On the receiving end, at the door, a Ti CC1111 Eval Kit ( CC1111EMK868)  is in charge of opening the door when commanded by the watch.

A hobby servo is used as an actuator for opening the door. The door also has an over-ride button which allows you to open in without a watch from inside and also with a key from the outside if something goes wrong. To add to the feature list, there is also an over current detect circuit, through a shunt resistor, which allows the door controller to automatically stop the servo if it draws to much current which means it has stalled.

The website goes in great detail from power consumption to security. Good work guys!