How it all started
The COVID-19 pandemic posed many challenges for schools around the United States. Our school, Kushner, has put in lots of work and impressively managed to open its doors for in-person learning back in the fall. The school implemented many precautions and rules to keep the students and teachers safe, as well as to qualify by the state to open. One of the significant changes this school year is our time spent outside. Kushner decided to make as many parts of our day as possible outdoors on our beautiful new campus. Both lunch and breakfast, as well as gym and some classes when the weather is appropriate, were held outdoors. They also gave us more time in between classes, allowing us to take much-needed mask breaks. The school made this very convenient for us, inserting large tents, tables, and chairs. The issue was, when kids took mask breaks, they commonly got locked outside, causing frustration for students, and causing them to be late for class. Teachers seemed very annoyed always opening the door for crowds of kids with their keycards, and you would expect all the students in our school to keep track of their own key cards. Kids would lose their key cards and need new ones, wasting time and money for the school.
Our class project on solving an issue with Arduino components was our perfect opportunity to get this going. We quickly made a prototype and have been working to improve our product ever since!
Where we are today
Since setting out to achieve our goal, we have done some incredible things. Most importantly, we have our product working! Using Arduino, we built the product and set it up for a video shoot in our school. We used Fusion 360 to design and 3D print a case for our product to make it look sleek and appealing to customers. Additionally, we entered our business idea into Buisness BootCamps, PitchNJ competition, and won second place! In the early months of trying to get our product off the ground, we have made amazing progress.
How it works
To use our product, the user will scan their finger on the designated spot on the device. When the fingerprint scanner detects a match, the LCD will display the name of the user as well as the time and date they scanned. A green LED will flash confirming that the scanner detected a match and a solenoid lock will open allowing the user to enter the bulding. If the scanner does not find a match, the LCD will display “No match try again”, and a red LED will flash. The solenoid will not unlock which will ensure to keep unwanted people out. Security Key is the perfect option for schools and houses of worship looking to cost effectively cut down on security costs without settling for worse security options.