SOLECON Submissions! (Presidential Spring)

Welcome guys to your daily dose of MECHAPARA. In this article, will be talking about a submission of a device for last year’s SOLECON. As you all might’ve known, every year, Takaha will organize a competition in putting hobbyist and inventors to their test in displaying their skills and creativity called SOLECON. The objective of the competition is to create an innovative device which showcases the durability of Takaha’s solenoids.

Back to the main subject, the device that we are going to discuss actually implements the usage of IOT (internet of things) for smartphone security. The device is dubbed “Presidential Spring” and is made by ‘Sweet Electronics’. They made a sweet video for their entry and you guys can check it out below.

The device’s objective is really simple; to not let other people snooping around your phone . The device’s concept is to store your phone in a casing, and only when you say the magic words, the phone will automatically eject your phone from the cartridge with the use of a solenoid,  letting you to be able to take it.

In this video, Sweet Electronics uses a Takaha Long Stroke Solenoid(35[mm]) and also the Apple Homekit, which is Apple’s home automation platform for controlling smart home products with iOS apps and Apple’s Siri voice commands. But, If you want another alternative instead of Apple Homekit, you can also used Raspberry Pi installed with Homebridge,  a lightweight NodeJS server you can run on your home network that emulates the iOS HomeKit API.

What’s cool about this project that it holds a lot of potential. With the current technology facing towards the direction in IOT innovation, this is one of the steps in applying IOT in personal security. Plus, this could be an addition to the application of solenoids in security as solenoids are also usually used for locking mechanisms.

A big congratulations and thanks to ‘Sweet Electronics’ for coming up with such a cools device. See you readers next time!