Smart Bike Lock - Smartbikelock/eec284 GitHub Wiki

Motivation and Objectives

As lots of bikes or bike parts were stolen, many people carry their seats around. There should be a easier solution to this problem. Our group aim to design a smart bike lock that deals with this issue. The smart bike lock detects whether or not the wheels and the seat of a bike is removed. The lock reminds the user to lock it up after the bike is parked. Also it reminds the user where the bike is parked.

Basic Functions

Alarm when parts of a bike are missing

Thanks to the invention of U-locks, most of bikes are not stolen as a whole. Usually only parts like wheels and seats are missing, while the main frame of the bike is still locked firmly to a rack. Typically, a bike can be dissembled into four parts: frame, seat and two wheels. It is helpful if an alarm is available to the rider when some of these parts are removed. Since a U-Lock which locks the frame to a rack is usually hard to break, it can generate an alarm when it can't detect the existence of other three parts.

Alarm when rider leaves the bike unlocked

When in a hurry, riders may forget to lock their bikes, which leaves thieves good chances. It will be great if the lock can remind its rider in this case. There are several "smart locks" for sale that allows remote lock/unlock through smartphone apps. However, it is not a good idea to completely get rid of keys because the limited battery life of smartphones can be annoying. Also, using a key is an alternate safety design that keeps the user aware of the lock.

Record position when parking

Almost everyone has a hard time to remember where a car or a bike is parked. A record of parking position will be helpful in this situation. There are already few products with this function. See the "Related Products" section.

##Implementation

RFID technology can be used to detect the existence of the parts. By setting unique RF tags onto these parts, the RF reader on U-Lock can detect if these part are removed. As tags should be invisible to thieves, we plan to use an active reader - passive tag implementation, so that there's no need of batteris for tags. The passive tags can be as small as a nickel and bendable. The distance between reader(U-Lock) and tags(four parts) is approximate centimeter level, so RFID tags with frequency of 13.56MHz(HF) are considered to be appropriate for the design. RFID readers will be fixed to the bike frame.

A smartphone app is required to detect whether the user is away from the bike. Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE) is used to connect the lock and the user's smartphone, so that when the BLE signal of the lock goes out of range, both the lock and the smartphone knows that the user is leaving the bike. It is easy to detect whether the bike is locked or the key is removed. At this moment, the smartphone app can provide an notification, and the lock can ring a buzzer as an alarm. Also, the smartphone app can record the position when the connection is off as the parking position.

##Temporary Goal Finish a prototype circuit with Arduino that demonstrates the basic functions described above, without the mechanical implementation of the key and keyhole. Finish the accompanying Android app with simplest UI. If the circuit can detect whether the tags are moved away from the reader, and the smartphone is out of range when the bike is not locked or the key is not removed, and alarms in all these situations, then the goal is met and the design is successful.

##Resources Needed -Arduino UNO

-Mifare MFRC522 RFID Reader

-13.56MHz RFID/NFC Tags

-BLE NRF8001

Related Products

###Linka Lock http://linkalock.com Automatically unlock when you are near the bike. However, the lock doesn't lock the bike to any fixed structure like a rack or a traffic sign, so the bike can be easily stolen as a whole. ###Bitlock https://bitlock.co Created a key-less lock by using Bluetooth communication. Pretty like the technique used in ZipCar. More than one user can use smartphones to unlock the bike.