Wouldn't it be cool if, instead of having to give your dog-sitter a key to your place, you could just text your home to let her in? Now we build it ourselves using the Lockitron lock module body, Metro Mini (tiny Arduino-compatible) and a FONA 800 cellular module.

Adafruit has discontinued carrying the Lockitron. To build this guide, you will need to source your own lock parts.

Normally, a Lockitron has a built-in WiFi system for locking & unlocking via their App. Since they have redesigned their enclosure, we now have the 'guts' of the Lockitron available for hacking. There's just enough space inside for some tasty Adafruit electronics

In this tutorial you'll learn how to listen to SMS messages on a FONA cellular module and use that to move a motor.

Please note this project is tested and working but there's a lot of optimizations we didn't add, to keep it simple! For example, it doesn't (but could): check the sender phone number to make sure its really you, have low power functionality for long term use, listen to the rotation-detection switches to verify that the lock has turned when the motor is activated, check and notify you when the battery gets low, etc! This is a fun project and a good intermediate-advanced maker electronics project, but it's not designed to protect your home and posessions!

This guide was first published on Jun 26, 2015. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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