KPHOB

DID I LOCK THE DOOR?

It has happened to many of us. We've left home or office and shortly after leaving, we started wondering whether or not we locked the door properly... How many of us have not experienced the stress and preoccupation throughout the whole day, party or trip for this reason?

It started almost 5 years ago when I was building my RWS bike at university lab and met this Japanese student who was meticulously working on a set of a tiny gears to attach to a key in order to have a lock indicator. The problem had occurred to me before, but I never thought it could be such a wide-spread problem. After some basic research it was clear that there are people who need that product and that the problem has not been addressed at all. A brief study of patents also revealed that there were tons of issued patents mostly by mechanical solutions and occasionally by electronic methods. All of them appeared to be far from being technically or economically viable.

With that background, KPHOB project began a year and half ago and ever since i have dedicated some of my free time to developing it. It started with simple idea of using a proximity sensor on the key and a magnet on the door to detect and register the times when we have used the key. that was not however a very convincing solution as it was not a reliable source of information because the sensor could be occasionally activated in presence of other magnetic fields. It also didn't offer a solution to know whether  we locked the door or otherwise unlocked it.

 The next step was adding the means to measure the revolution of the keys so the users can make sure they locked the door properly. It meant that we had to add a magnetometer so we can detect the relative orientation of the key fob towards the door. We also added an accelerometer to the PCB to further analyze the motions.

It has been a long way but finally the project has reached the moment of truth, I wonder if people really like it, and if they like it would they pay for it?

Next month I am going to seek some funds through Kickstarter while we are working to finalize every thing about the project. Knowing that people do really want this product alongside some financial support, makes the process of development way more delighting :)