Do you have siblings who like to go through your stuff? Here’s some inspiration for a fun project you can make at home: a bedroom security system.
Some of the components you can include in the finished project are an alarm that plays a sound from a speaker or plays a bell/buzz/etc, led lights that can flicker on and off, a motion detector, a secret switch to disable it, and more.
You can do a very simple version of a room alarm for a couple of bucks using this guide, but we’ll be looking at something a little cooler than a very basic design.
If you use a Raspberry Pi device, you can incorporate the modules we mentioned above, and more.
Here’s what you’ll need
- A Raspberry Pi starter kit (Can be found on Amazon, etc)
- A light (12 volt led lights will give plenty of brightness without using a ton of power.)
- PIR motion sensor
- Webcam
- Battery/power source
- Wire and basic tools like wire cutters and a wire-stripper
Putting it all together and programming it
It’s useful to put together a plan ahead of time for how everything will connect together, and you’ll also need to program it to work using the Pi. There are a number of useful tutorials that you’ll find, but here’s a video to get you started:
This video shows a whole-home system with a number of different components. It should definitely offer some good inspiration for what you can do with just a bedroom. One of the possible additions mentioned above is a webcam, but obviously you want to be mindful of where it’s pointing in your room because there can be security issues with something home-brewed like this, and you don’t want to be invading your own privacy while trying to stop someone else from snooping around in your room. A cam pointing towards the door that only sees the door is an option.
The purpose of the bright LED lights is that it’ll shine in someone’s face and basically let them know “I know what you’re up to, get out of my room!” You could set it to a strobe pattern, a solid light, or whatever else you want. You could tie all of this in with a Philips Hue setup to have color changing rights.
At the end of the day, there are countless things you can do with a Raspberry Pi and setting up a security system for your room is just one of them. You’ll likely end up finding way cooler and crazy things to do as a teenager.
If your siblings constantly snoop through your room, a flashing light might not be enough to stop them, but video evidence or records from the motion sensor will certainly help you to get them to confess to the crime.
