Smart & Secret Bookcase

So I decided to create a secret bookcase door in my house…

I always wanted to build a room with floor to ceiling bookcases despite the decline of the physical book. When you have floor to ceiling bookcases however, you really want to then have a secret door, obviously. So my friend Scott and I set out to make this happen. Not just any secret door, mind you, but one that uses the SmartThings service to enable a lot of fun and follies. I’ll chronicle some of the work here in the coming weeks.

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How should we go about this?

Once we decided we wanted to build a secret door (and contracted with the carpenters to design the physical mechanisms) we started brainstorming actuating scenarios. Maybe I can share some of the early drawings and thoughts about the physical bookcase in the future but for this project I am focusing on the triggers and software that went into this.

We’ve all seen movies where a secret door is accessed by a wall sconce, bronze bust, or tilting book. Hack yeah I wanted something like that. Turns our SmartThings can help in a number of ways. We could have used a SmartSense SmartSenseOpenCloseMulti in a hollowed out book/sconce/bust that could use its accelerometer to know when it was being tipped. Pretty easy. We still may do that but what we settle on was something different. I had the idea of spinning a globe to a certain point that then triggered the door opening (with a solenoid that pulls a wire connected to a latch).

We took the magnet from a SmartSense Open/Close (now the same device as the Multi) and removed it from its housing and attached it to the stationary portion of the globe. Then we put the remainder of the SmartSense Open/Close and taped it inside the globe – taking care to lane up the sensor with an area of the world that was memorable – in this case a star symbol in the Indian Ocean. I’ll post some photos next post.

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Arduino + SmartThings Arduino Shield = Secret Door Control

By combining a SmartThings Shield with Arduino we can make any Arduino project a SmartThing. In this case, it is the controller for the door. The shield adds the ability for the hub (and thus the cloud and my mobile devices) to tell the door what to do. I am not the firmware developer-type so Scott hooked me up with a bit of magic. Hopefully I can get him to post about it here soon.

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Not-So Secret

Looks like my secret door just a whole lot less secret.

Here’s the code I used for the final project:

/**
 *  Hidden Door
 *
 *  Author: SmartThings
 */
 
def preferences()
{
	return [
		sections: [
			[
				title: "When the secret knock happens ...",
				input: [
					[
						name: "globe",
						title: "Where?",
						type: "capability.contactSensor",
						description: "Tap to set",
						multiple: false
					]
				]
			],
			[
				title: "Open the hidden door...",
				input: [
					[
						name: "door",
						title: "Which?",
						type: "device.doorShield",
						description: "Tap to set",
						multiple: false
					]
				]
			]
		]
	]
}
 
def installed()
{
	subscribe(globe.contact)
}
 
def updated()
{
	unsubscribe()
	subscribe(globe.contact)
}
 
def contact(evt)
{
	log.debug "Globe value: $evt.value, $evt"
	if (evt.value == "closed") {
		log.debug "Opening door"
		door.open()
	}
}
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Is there some sort of GitHub Integration available? Maybe use Gist or something?

This is such a cool project! Is that a ladder inside? Pretty cool way to hide an attic access or wall safe…

Oh wow @Ben has lost a lot of weight since this! Nice one Ben!

That’s a really cool project, I picture it similar to what they have on the Fox TV show “Gotham”. Wish I had the need for this at my house :smile: