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Karate Chops Don't Cut it

Today was my first day of school. It went very smoothly except for one thing. I got my locker combo and number, but when I tried to crack the thing open for a peek and some peace of mind, it completely failed. I'm not going to play a blame game here, but whoever made my combo have all 3 digits within 4 numbers of each other should have to open my locker a thousand times. Or something. And no, the karate chop didn't help in the least.

Easy Way or Epic Way

The obvious remedy to this situation is to go to the main office of my school and ask the nice ladies behind the desk to please get a janitor to fix my locker. Now, me knowing me, that is a very difficult task. Me + social situation = fail, and therefore a different solution has to be gotten.

Said solution consists of a device designed to crack the combo on the locks at my school. My running design uses two motors, one simple motor to push the latch, and one servo motor to turn the dial. The accuracy on these locks is terrible, you can be off by a few numbers for each digit of the combo and still open the lock. This reduces the possible combinations dramatically. After the little machine is snugly fitted into the recessed area of the locker where the actual lock is it goes to work, quietly churning through numbers until the combination is found, at which point a little while flag is rotated into view so you know you can finally open the locker.

The Nitty Gritty

Getting down to the complex nature of the mechanics and electronics, oh never mind, I am tired and I've still got parts of it to work out. I know there will be an Atmega168 microcontroller in there somewhere, a servo motor, regular motor, some switches, and a battery as well.

To be updated in the future.