Recycled Wireless Door Lock (No Coding)

While microcontrollers and some code can do a lot of things, sometimes a project can be achieved by using some electronic device with the same or similar purpose as the product you are trying to build.
This concept is what we will see in the project, is it possible to make a functional door lock with recycled electronics? (spoiler: it is).
We will look at how we are going to do it, as well as some favorable and unfavorable aspects.
Let\'s start!
So if you look at any of my other instructions, you will know that I have made a wireless door lock (
Check there.
However, the previous project used Arduino and some custom code, and the purpose of this project was to make the wireless door lock as simple as possible.
However, when we start building a wireless door lock with no code, we will learn the basics of circuits and how to redesign old electronic devices, which has proven to be a very useful skill
So when trying to find an electronics that can be re-used for door locks, we have to remember something because it requires some sort of wireless communication, whether it\'s Bluetooth, and secondly, we have to make sure that our electronic donations have at least one moving part that can slide to the door lock.
As it happens, an RC car fits perfectly into this category and it communicates wirelessly with the controller and moving parts for our use.
So the final parts list is as follows: the tools we need are: So first of all, we want to know what we are using and we need to take the car apart.
It is easy to do this simply by unscrewing all the visible screws.
Then we should see the main circuit board and two motors, the rear motor is used as the driver of the car, and the front motor is used together with the gearbox to turn the front wheel.
If you look closely at the front motor, you will notice that there is a small gap connected to the steering assembly, which is most likely the way we move the sliding lock, so we can put this motor aside now.
Let\'s take a moment to see what parts are coming out of the car so we can know what is useful and what is not: these, to a large extent, in typical cheap RC cars, you will find that there may be more cars.
It is important to note that at this point we only need the front motor and the main control board, and we need to test whether the front motor is really able to move the sliding lock backwards and forward.
To do this, we need a slight modification of the sliding lock, we need to pull out the small metal handle.
This is usually maintained by rubbing or glue, so it\'s easy to get it out.
Once out, put the nob of the steering motor into the hole and keep it in place.
Now provide 5 V voltage to the motor, you should see slide lock shooting forward if everything goes well (
If this is not clear enough, please check the image).
We have found our part and we have tested it and now we are ready.
We can now stick the motor to the sliding lock with the gap in the hole we remove the metal handle to make.
Then we need to find a position for the main control board of the car.
I ended up just sticking mine to the top of the motor.
So when it comes to power supply, we can use the original 3 AA batteries, but after a few hours they will run out of power, so I decided to try and connect it to 5
V power supply.
Remember now that the AA battery is 1.
5 volts, so the three of them add up to 4 volts.
5 V, just under 5 V, but I suspect it works well.
Although this project may be interesting, we must also remember some shortcomings.
First of all, you should not put this on the real door.
Most of these cheap RC cars run at the same frequency, which means that if your neighbors suddenly drive, they may lock you out.
Also, these boards are not reliable at all, so after a few weeks of continuous use, you may find that your door is permanently locked.
Keep in mind that this project is just a demo and should never be used on the door of any activity.
So the wireless door lock should be done at this point.
I put my installation in place just to do a test for it, but ended up taking it down the same day because I didn\'t want to risk locking the door when I left the room.
If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them in the comments, thank you very much for reading!