Arduino Automated Servo Lock Box!

I really enjoy puzzles crosswords sudokus word puzzles brain teasers any kind of thing to make you like stretch your imagination and use your brain a little bit but still keep it fun is right down my alley but I specifically really enjoy the way an escape room or a puzzle room adds ciphers and clues and physical puzzles to decipher codes and find keys in new rooms and things like that some of the most fun escape rooms I've ever been to also incorporate a ton of smart Tech technology and they don't just rely on Old School keys and locks and since I'm an engineer who likes hobby electronics and solving puzzles I decided to try to make a programmable four-digit code Arduino lockbox for myself now if you enter that code correctly into my box the automatic Servo opens up and you can find a prize inside if you're unfamiliar with the idea behind a four-digit code or Cipher check out the one on screen now there's a four-digit code i hidden there and I tried not to make this one too tricky if you think you got it just keep watching but if you want to take a minute and try to solve this one I suggest you pause here while you figure it out last chance now let's take a look so this code was one 2 4 1 which you find by realizing that there are four English numbers hidden in words that are homonyms or words that sound the same as those numbers and if you enjoyed that puzzle be sure to stick around cuz I'll have some more I thought up near the end of the video now let's check out how I made this thing so to enter a four-digit code and have four options you obviously need four inputs and you could get away with conventional push buttons but something about capacitive touch sensors and the way they're actuated just by having a finger close to them without actually pressing anything in just seemed cooler to me you'll want an Arduino Nano or a comparable microcontroller for the programming then I used 12 220 ohm resistors to go with my 12 LEDs I had a bank of four red four green and four blue then the last key piece of Hardware is the micro Servo if you're super interested in learning more about how I wired this up and tested it on breadboard be sure to check out that first video which I'll leave a link to now and below in the description basically I wrote a program that can receive a 4digit code and that correlates to numbers from the four inputs so if this is put 1 2 3 and four and you make a secret code 3 2 4 and 1 you're checking the sequence of the inputs and letting the user know how far along they are in their guess using the white or blue LEDs then use the red and green LEDs for feedback about how correct or incorrect the answer was until they cracked the puzzle and the only thing the servo needs to do is open when they get it correct and close when they get it incorrect I think there's a ton of possib abilities to incorporate more complicated puzzling and riddling using the same format of inputs and outputs but to keep it simple to showcase the puzzle box I'm leaving it at that for now but drop a comment letting me know how you think this box could be used as well when I started making the project I definitely thought the wiring and code would be the challenging part and then throwing it into a box would be the easy part but man was I wrong this is definitely heavily on me but I just do not have much of a background in product design when I made the leap from breadboard to a legit PCB I had to spend some time learning how to design a PCB I used a free software called kycad and I made a video about how to get started with that as well and I showed the process step by step for making your first PCB using this exact board as the model so I'll leave a link to that again and go check that out if you're curious for more info once you have the design file you still aren't fully there because actually manufacturing a printed circuit board is a crazy complicated process but fortunately there are companies out there that are super friendly to Makers that provide this service like the sponsor of today's video PCB way and there will be more about them in a little bit now this was a huge leap from the project looking like a hobby build to really starting to have a legit feel to it now it was time to figure out the design for the final 3D printed box I started with the top because I DEC decided pretty early I wanted the PCB on display since it was my first custom PCB board and I wasn't going to hide it I basically went with a rectangular top plate with four pillars to mount the PCB to where its mounting holes lined up which should give it enough room to not have its electrical components pressed to the lid next I went with the three sides in the bottom of the box that didn't have to do any moving that let me knock out four of the six sides of the box with the only customization I really had to do being this Notch where the hinge door would sit then I had to design the side where the servo and the hinge and the door were all going to go and this easily took me as long to model as all the other components combined fortunately the hinge basic design came from a bass project of someone who had cooked it up for an R2D2 door flap which was kind of fun and I just had to adapt it to my design getting precise measurements for the servvo and the hinge and the arms it just felt like more art than science to be honest but once it came out good it was so satisfying assembly was definitely tricky with so many wires packed inside the box and I ended up putting the four capacitive touch sensors in a somewhat funky and kind of arbitrary location reason for that is that when I designed the 3D model they would theoretically all fit in one way in a really nice pattern the reality is that getting all their wires attached and then attaching them to the wall was just too awkward and I ended up end up having to stagger two on the sidewall and two on the back once I did get them into their somewhat uh arbitrary locations I used a drill to remove some of the surface on the outside where the buttons were to make it more obvious for whoever's solving the puzzle all in all I feel like this project taught me so much about actually designing a product and trying not to just make something that would be a useful YouTube tutorial but an actual product and finished thing that you would want to hang on with and play and show to your friends if you had any now that it's finally done 3D printed and assembled let's do a few more of these puzzles while you're solving them I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the sponsor of today's video PCB way now each of these puzzles has a four-digit code using 1 2 3 and four hidden somewhere inside of it again pause if you need a little more time and I'll try to throw a counter down letting you know when we're going to reveal the answers PCB way is making it possible for makers and hobbyists to prototype builds using professional grade printed circuit boards that until recently would have been impossible for anyone other than a big business to even have access to on top of that they also offer 3D printing and CNC Machining for metal Parts as well they also have very responsive customer support teams and Engineers review your orders before you submit them designing a printed circuit board can be done on a variety of free designer softwares then exported to PCB design files the most common format probably being a gerber file PCB way lets you update your Gerber files directly to their ordering page and gets you a quote instantly as well as letting you pick tons of customizations like text and solder mask color which determines the color of your board that's how I got these sweet black pcbs with white lamaster tech text on them a massive thank you to PCB way for sponsoring this video and making this project possible one thing this project has def taught me is that it's just insanely difficult to make anything just because it's not perfect doesn't mean I can't be proud of it so I hope you guys find this project cool I hope you enjoyed the format of this video I really enjoyed making this video and let me know in the comments what we should build next massive thank you to my patreon supporters who make breaking into this kind of bigger hardware and product design uh stuff possible thank you to everyone who leaves nice comments on the videos subscribes to the channel and leaves likes I appreciate the entire Master Tech YouTube Community I had a ton of fun making this project I hope it was helpful I hope it was fun and let me know what you want to see more of next time as always good luck with your projects thanks for watching and we'll see you next time bye