GPSafe Box

Hello everyone,

First of all, we would like to say that this project was for 'Creative Electronics', a Beng Electronics Engineering 4th year module at the University of Málaga, School of Telecommunications (www.etsit.uma.es). The project has been made by Nicolás Mañosas, Grzegorz Korzeniewski and Javi Agüera

The purpose of this project was to create a Safe Box which let us open it in a specific Location. The main module of the system is the GPS NEO6MV2 which let us take the latitude and longitude from satellite signal and use these coordinates to play with the Safe Box. The idea was to add a user interface, based on the menu for interacting with the Box, to the system.

A brief explanation of the Box operation is, if you want try to open the box, the first step is to enter a password that the system requests from you, after this step, if the password has been entered successfully the system will check if the user coordinates match with the internal coordinates values for opening.

So let's get started.

Step 1: System Operation Description

In this video, we want to explain how the system works.

Step 2: Bill of Materials

This project has been created trying to be as cheap as it is possible. We
have used the following materials to build the Box :

1. UBLOX-NEO-6M GPS

2. Funduino Mega 2560

3. TFT Shield arduino 2.3"

4. Four Push buttons to interact with the menu.

5. Servo motor to simulate the opening of the door box.

6. USB adapter for external connection.

7. Simple wood box.

8. Battery adapter.

Step 3: Programming

The code has been developed on Arduino IDE to subsequently upload to
Funduino Mega which was the main module/ brain of our system. Basically, the code is checking continuously if the user has pressed any button to interact with the User interface (Menu), in this menu we have decided to include 3 basic options in addition to logical exit option.

These three options let the user the followings controls/XXXX:

1. open the box if the user has entered a four digits password before the system checks if the current location matches with the coordinates stored internally.

2. This second option is created to check what is the current location of the user, in other words, choosing this option the user will watch what is user current longitude and latitude in the system of geographic coordinates.

3. The third option is the configuration settings. In this case, the user after introducing a four digit correct password will have the access to two main options. One of them is to change this password which the user has to introduce before trying to open the box and in case of changing the default configuration (Password and opening coordinates), and the second and not less important is change the opening coordinates for the box.

There is also the third option of coming back to the main menu.

Step 4: Assembly

After checking that all the system works fine, it is time to embed all the
devices on the box, so let's do it.

Before this step we thought about the correct distribution of devices in the box since we had a limited area for embedding all the devices.

The biggest restriction in the assembly was the placement of the Funduino Mega and TFT 2.3" since we wanted to give the user an external connection for debugging, so the placement of Funduino had to be near the edge of the box. One restriction more was the servo motor placement due to the original box had the opening system in one site and we have used the same site for simulating the servo motor opening system.

One last thing was to check if the GPS was able to receive the signal in the box, the results of this checking would establish if we needed to create a little hole in the box for good reception of the satellite signal. Fortunately, the GPS was working fine into Box so finally we haven’t created the hole.

Step 5: Challenges Faced Along the Project

The main problems or challenges faced have been the following :

1. Deciding what board use for the full connection of all devices

2. Problems with the communication between GPS and SAV Maker Board

3. Difficulties in the satellite signal reception with the original antenna of the UBLOX-NEO-6M GPS.

4. Problems with serial communication and servo motor related with libraries.

Step 6: Final Conclusion

Even though we have faced some problems during the development of the
project we can say that we have enjoyed all of them and learned a lot from the world and environment that arduino offers us.

Also, in this project we have had to assume a higher cost in some components since we didn’t have enough time to wait for the shipping from other shops/ websites which let us pay a lower price.

As utility models for this project we have mentioned a Safe Box but there are multiple models to imagine like a present which only can be opened in a specific location.

We would like to thank our professors Arcadio and Luis for their help during the project and our classmates who have lent us the Funduino mega and the TFT 2.3" .