I built a cell phone jail for my teen’s iphone. This thing has an automated lock, Arduinos, LEDs, sound and more!
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I built a cell phone jail for my teenagers
phone to lock it up. And it looks amazing, but it's also the
most high tech thing I have ever built. But that didn't come
without a lot of struggles, And I had to pull in help
on a couple of different occasions. I know this walnut is really old. It's been sitting in a barn for like 50
or 60 years and I got it off of Craigslist A few years back. A lot of it is pretty nasty And it's got a lot of sap wood to it,
but the color is absolutely amazing. I think it is going to be perfect
for this project. After all the milling,
these came in right under 5/8 of an inch And around
15 millimeters for all my metric friends. But I had to take off Quite a lot because, you know, there's
lots of barn poop on there. I know. Hello. So it's a little bit smaller
than I was hoping for, And hopefully that doesn't
bite me in the butt later. But these things do look amazing. There's so much character
and the color is going to be awesome. So now I can go ahead and start
gluing together some of these panels And these small little blue ups are going
to be for the bottom and the shelves. And so I was able to use some
really nasty wood for this bottom piece. And the nicer, more clear stuff will be. Four of the sides in the front panel And the panels turned out great
and I just knocked down the seam With a little card scraper
and oh, that is satisfying. So you might be thinking,
Hey, Brad, I didn't see you blow up That second long panel. And you'd be right,
because this is the shape for the side And because it's angled, I thought, Oh, I could just turn it around
and fit to just like that. And that was all great
until I realized that that would give me Two left sides and not a right side. And the back of this is kind of nasty
and I didn't want to use it,
So I had to go up another panel. You don't like to kind of
get my mistakes out of the way early So I can really pop up
that mistakes were made. Count. But it's all right.
It happens to the best of us. So right now, I'm going to go start
cutting these out of these two panels to I went ahead and cut all the sides down. And yes,
I do have a right side and a left side. I use my tapering Jig on the table side to make these cuts
and make them exactly the same. And while I was at it,
I also cut all the pieces That were going to go down in the center. So we'll have a little bottom there. We're going to have a little lower piece. So this will all fit together
a little something like this. Oh, not like that. Or like Something a little bit like this. And then a little control panel Don't have a hinged door on the front, And that will hold the bars And this is just going to be
a little cavity down Here, is going to hold
some of the electronics. Just got a few spacers in here right now
that will hold up the shelf. So then we'll have the shelf
that will go right on top here And then boom, just like that. So this is where it's going to be. And then the Chargers will sit right here. So now what I need to do is the control
panel that's going to be up here. That's going to have a little digital Timer, that's going to have a countdown
of when the lock will unlock. That's going to be super cool.
I can't wait to show you that. But what I need to do right now
is get an angle right here So that this will all mesh together. Now, all I have to do
is use the Pythagorean theorem,
Which we know is a squared
plus B squared equals C squared, And then we can get the CO vector
of the tangential. I'm just getting Just going to use the line
and tilt the blade until it hits the line. Oh, the joys of working with nasty old
barn wood. After I made that cut, here's
what I found. That was like Bach inclusion,
and that would be right at the very top And probably the most conspicuous
part of the entire project. So I think we need some help. Norman What do I do, man? You could send
some of your practical wisdom Through this picture into my workshop. I would appreciate it. Tell me what I should do. Help me, Norm. Brad, just cut a new one. Thank you. Before I start joining this together,
I need to prepare this little bottom shelf For the electronic lock. So this is a little solenoid lock, And this is just a little baby thing. It looked a lot bigger on the screen. I'm hoping this is going to work. Some of the reviews we're talking about,
it was not very strong, but I need it To be sitting under this bottom shelf
with just a little latch PS up above. So I'm going to lay out for it
and cut out a little square So that I can put it in there. All right. I went at this thing with a chisel, and I am maybe the world's
second worst chiseler. I know who the worst is, but it's not me. But this is fitting in here Real nice now, so that'll work
great when I go to install it. And now I know where the floating tenants
Can go to make sure they don't
get in the way. I'm using floating Tenants to assemble this a.k.a dominoes,
but you don't need a domino to cut them. There are some cheaper alternatives
like the TLC or the COMEX. So if you've not seen this,
I did a video talking about these And these can cut the same slots
that the domino does. So check out that video
if you haven't yet. So now I can just slide these together And start getting a feel for what
this is really going to look like. And the nice part is with these floating
tenants, I can knock it down and I know I'm going to have to take this thing
apart a few times as I'm fitting in. All the electronics Put this other side on. Oh yeah, This thing is looking awesome. Oh, man, I love this. So now that I have this in place,
I can fit for the door Because I want to get this all assembled
and make sure that I get the door sized. Exactly right. But before I do that,
I want to show you guys How the lock works and start
getting into some of the electronics. Here is the base of the whole
locking system that I'm starting with. And basically my whole goal
is to turn on and off And this little solenoid
and you can do that really easy Or you can make it really hard
and have other things happen too. But right now I'm going to be driving
that off of a little Arduino Nano, And that is a small microcontroller,
which is basically just A little tiny computer that runs code. It looks for inputs and then does outputs. So it says, you do this, I'll do that. So I just put a little bit of code on here
now to say that when I push this button, Send the electrical signal to this relay,
which will then power up the solenoid. So if I push the button, It opens for one second. That's it's just fun to do.
So you can leave it at that
and just have one button And be able to push it and have it open Because we want to add
in a lot more things and have a timer And also have some LEDs
and have it do all kinds of fun stuff. We need to have the microcontroller. Now. An automated lock
isn't going to do me any good Unless I have a door to put it
on, so I'm going to build that next. So if I've got the frames Now in their miter up and
I am going to be gluing these together. But I wanted to put some little bars
in there To really make it look like a jail. So I drilled holes on the top
in the bottom about an inch apart. And that is going to be for these
brass bars here and actually brass tubes. But I think this is going to look really
cool. Let's see here. Let's see if this will work out then. These are too tall at the moment. I have to cut them to size. Oh, Oh, oh, that's perfect. I was hoping they'd be narrow enough That you can't quite fit your fingers
through there. That is so cool. I swear that I wasn't on the cell phone. I feel like the bars are a little yellow,
so I went ahead and hit one with a bar Helper bar bar keepers, Helper bar helper Bar keepers, bar keeper, helper. I polished it and got rid of all the junk
in the oxidation office. I'm going to hit the rest of them,
cut them to size And then get them in here. And then what I need to do is put in the
little hinge that's going to be on top. So there's a hidden hinge on the top And then the underside
of the little control panel. And then after I get that,
then I can put the latch on the bottom
For the lock. But you've never seen a man polishes
brass tubes before. Before I put the door together, I'm
going to put the hinges in and using These little concealed hinges,
these are really cool. And I think it's going to be a neat
look on there. So did a little practice
cut on this little test piece here? And it fits pretty good. Good enough where I think I can go ahead
and attack these and get them cut And then I can start
assembling everything. And yeah, hopefully this looks great. I don't know how this is
actually going to work, so we'll find out. All right. Get the hinges in there
and they turn out pretty good. So little gaps here and there. But check this out. I've put the top on here. There we go. And so as it's sitting there,
then you can just open the front Hoop. How cool is that? These invisible hinges are pretty neat. I want to put some finish
on the inside of this door before I put it together, because that will be
nearly impossible to put it on. Once these bars are in here, we're going
to start stacking these in here and then See how it goes together, because I can't
fold it up like I normally would since The top
and the bottom are going to be locked Just a touch more. All right, that will do it. Let's get some glue. All right. Oh, this door turned out so cool. Look at that. That is just awesome. All right, so now I need to figure out
how I'm going to interact With the lock here, So I'm going to get
this lock installed on the base here. Then I'm going have to bevel the lower
end of this doors that it will sit
Flush on that angle, and then we can
figure out how the lock goes in here. Even though this lock Is just a little baby lock,
this whole thing is just kind of for fun. It's more of just a visual place
where we can put our phones And quite honestly, I think Susan and I
will probably use it as much as the kids Do just to have a place
to put your cell phone away And kind of get away from digital life
and stop Recording videos. This material is so thin and is locking
so small. I need some really tiny screws
and so I've got this little bin And I don't know if I'm the only one
that has a bin like this. There's just all the random screws From like installation kits and hardware
that are just one easy to use. And no matter how many you're looking for,
you can always find that minus one. So if you just need one,
you won't find it. But if you need four, you'll find three. And there you're in there somewhere that I found it. All right. It's put back together.
And now this is the moment of truth. I did install the hinges,
and now I can put them in here, And we'll see what the fit is like. All right. I made this a really tight fit,
so hoping it doesn't scrape. Let's see how it works, how Well it fits side to side. It's not cracked. And I can just bevel the underside of that
to get it to lay flush. All right.
After a few cuts, A little bit of rubbing on the sides. It's saying that down, but,
oh, that is looking. So check this out. Jail cell. Okay. As I try to figure out this lock,
I'm realizing this is playing out
Very differently than I thought. I had this little piece here
that I was going to attach. This is clearly way too big and,
you know, that's just going to hit Right back in there. I don't know if I can modify this. I'm kind of thinking I'm just going to
maybe make a little latch out of wood I to put some things together and See we can figure out, All right, if my bench is any indication. I've been hard at work. It is. And this is what I came up with,
which is just a little wooden lock That's going to go on the back of this
and I'm going to draw it in. And I probably used like seven
or eight tools just to make this. And I know a wooden latch is not the best, So I can always pull a piece of metal
in here if it starts wearing out. I see if this latches in, This does need to be tightened
a little bit, but the lock is working. I've got a little fix on that latch
that is drying right now, But I want to show you guys
what I've been doing with the electronics. It has gotten a little out of control
here. And the whole idea of the cell phone
jail is we're going to have a timer. So I've added in a little LCD here
and then buttons and little knobs here To make everything work. And I am not a coder. I did not figure this out on my own. A big thank you to Lucien Blanc aboard. He's got a project called the Time
DeLay Lockbox, and it was on Instructables And I found it there and I used his code
as the basis for the timer And to make everything work,
I had to change around a lot of stuff. Now I'm just moving around wires,
trying to get stuff to work, And I kind of felt like Grogu
trying to fix the Mandalorian ship. No, don't. Don't put the blue one back. Put the red one where the blue one was. No, hold them apart. No,
But I've Been working on this behind the scenes
and I have put in at least 40 hours Worth of work into the coding
and the arrangement and everything. Right. So let me show you how it works. If I push the reset button right Here, it's set, and then I can spin
this little rotary knob here And it will count up and then to arm it,
I can push this next little button. It's going to flash for a second
and then the countdown is going to start. And then you can't unlock that
until the countdown is done. So if I try to unlock that,
nothing happens. But if I wait until it's done
and I push that, it will unlock. But now I'm going to take this big jumbo
pile of wires and make it look nice. So I'm going to put the LCD
and all the buttons up here on the control Panel, get that all in and figure out
how to get everything wired inside there. Plus, I'm Going to add a few more bells and whistles
to really make this thing awesome. I know I'm a perfectionist,
so doing something like designing The front of a control panel
is something that I will spend hours And hours and hours
on from designing another software Program to doing the scenes,
the cut outs and tests, And then going over to the laser
for the engraving And making sure that the font is right
and the size and all that. But I am extremely happy
how this ended up turning out. I've got all the holes cut in here
ready for all the different buttons And you'll see
what all of these little things mean. And just a little bit that also I hadn't
seen see out the back here To fit all the controls and things
because of the thickness of the wood. But I tell you what,
this is looking great. And now I'm ready to assemble. I use a ton of different tools, hardware
and supplies to make this project. And I got a lot of those. And Woodcraft
was the sponsor of today's video. They are a woodworking supply
and hardware store. They have everything from the tools
that I use to make all my cuts
And joinery to the hardware,
like the invisible hinges And the finishing supplies
to make it all look amazing. So they have over 70 stores around the US That you can go check out,
but if you don't have one near you, You can go to woodcraft dot
com and pick up anything you need there. So for your next woodworking project,
go check out Woodcraft. Thank you to a draft
for being awesome sponsor of the channel. Oh how can a group the small Be so stressful Right? We're all saying it up
and now I'm going to apply some oil based Finish and it's
really going to make this walnut pop. All right. The finish on this turn out
absolutely amazing. It is looking great.
I got the door reinstalled. I also cut a little panel in here and
this is going to go right in front here. And then the phone
charger will be sitting here And then all the electronics
are going to be in the back. But now I've got this
big jumbled mess of wires So I can start filling everything
in the control panel And then I'll show you
all the little goodies that I added to it. And the challenge
is going to be rewiring this Because these are all really short wires
and I'm going to need some longer wires. I'm still going
to keep this on breadboard, Which is fairly temporary, And I'm going to convert it to a smaller
one though, Because a lot of these things
that are in the board down here Are going to be going up into the console. So it should shrink everything. But I've only done this one Or two times before, so I'm just going to
get going and we'll see what happens Here. This turned out so awesome. I absolutely love how this looks.
It's like a retro feel to it, And the walnut and the brass just feels
something straight out of DIY perks. Matt over there is awesome. And actually he's Been a huge inspiration for me
into wanting to get into more electronics. So go check him out if you haven't yet. I'm working with electronics and something
I've been really interested in For a while now and I want to do
more of it all the channels. So let me know down below
if this is something you like. If you want to see me go into more detail
on some of the things here. But it is really fun and you get to buy
a whole lot of new tools Other than woodworking, Everything ready to be transferred over
and I'll just hook it up. We'll take it for a run. All right. I've got it all set up here. Now we're going to bring down my son,
Cole. He's going to see it for the first time. Turn out here.
Check out my latest project. What is
this, like a prison for your cell phone? That is exactly what it is.
So here's how it works. All the light's green. You can just open it. Wait, that's actually so cool. Hold on. It's kind of reminds me of, like,
that one scene from the From home alone with the curtains. So I try to open it when it's like. All right, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Dude,
I got to try to open it. Please do not do that. Try to open it like a normal person. If we want to put it overnight
or hit the set, we can put that to How many of our hours we need and then arm Is the Mario Kart intro, dude. Oh, we're wave y y.
What?
You could have just like, checked My search history or something
and said you made this. That's right. So now you can't open it, but Don't try to open it anyway. No, these are all we know them
so they try to get in early. He just hits the Nope. If. See, the
lock is controlled by electricity, So that would probably reset the timer,
plug it back in, Boot up. What built in to this is high security. So even if he unplugs it,
he still can't get to the phone. There's only
one way to get this thing back open up. Oh, Dad. Power. What? You guys were watching? I built in an override to the side
with RFID. Oh, Once we get under a minute, Now it goes into seconds,
and it will count down for the seconds. All right, here we go. Get the final opening. Okay, so this is something. Seriously, Mario. Mario, what up? And now it is open again. I mean, on one hand, it's cool,
but my question stays. Why you got to see more videos
to make your kids say why? There's a playlist
right over my son's face. What's.