A Totally Awesome DIY Security Project - Raspberry Pi Face Recognition Treasure Box

As you know, I'm currently working on a few DIY security projects to share with you guys. My favorite place to go for inspiration has been, Make. These folks do some seriously awesome DIY projects. Most of them beginner to intermediate-level DIYers can do themselves. While perusing their site, I found this gem:

Raspberry Pi Face Recognition Treasure Box - MAKE

DIY Security Projects For This Year

Winter is sort-of, almost, hopefully over soon. Every summer, I set about teaching my son the various ways of my craft. Last summer, I did a DIY security project where me and my son built a booby-trap of sorts. We used Dollar Store magnetic window alarms, fishing line, and two-sided tape to create an audible tripwire alarm.

$3.00 Set-up Cost

Over the course of the last year since then, I have also created an audible duress alarm. I will post a video as well as a how-to later on.  Suffice it to say, this was an EXTREMELY fun project.

This year, I have several DIY security projects I'd like to build and deploy.

1. A motion sensor alarm using Raspberry Pi. I haven't decided whether I want the alarm to be just be audible or if I want it to be audible and tweet or send a text message when there's been a breach.
2. I created a duress alarm in my home, previously, using NFC tags in my car to be triggered when my phone made contact. This summer I'd like to expand on this with an NFC-enabled video surveillance system. More on this later.
3. I'm also interested in putting together a much more comprehensive security system in my home using basic battery power, online-purchased sensors, control panel, and monitoring station. I have a rough idea as to what I want. I may do a series of articles about this.
4. I'm also in the process of completing a covert surveillance project that has been demonstrated online.
5. Next year, I will embark on my biggest project - my very own DIY drone. This will take considerable time but I think it could be well worth it.
6. I also plan on doing a series of small but inexpensive (some FREE) DIY security projects. Look out for stories on DIY security containers and other cool stuff.

All of my projects are to help teach my son the ways of using inexpensive tools to provide sound mitigation and response to actual emergencies. I hope it will also demonstrate for him the value of doing things for yourself and how when done for providing protection for your family and yourself, it can be richly rewarding. Wish me luck and stand-by for a killer year.

Tactical Walls: Covert Arms Storage

VIDEO: Using NFC Tags In My Car

I decided to do this project because I felt I had a few security vulnerabilities with respect to my vehicle. There are plenty of things I can do to perhaps prevent an attack on myself in my vehicle. That is a fool-hearty goal at best. Prevention of any crime is difficult to measure. We assume crime is prevented by the things we do but we have no idea as to whether the threat ever went away. Our best course of action, then, is to think about mitigation. In other words, we seldom plan for WHEN the attack or emergency will occur. In this scenario, I felt I a great mitigator would be the use of a discreet mechanism alerting authorities and other concerned persons if I found myself in an emergency. I felt NFC (near field communication) tags would be best, since my phone is an integral part of my travels in my vehicle. Placement of course was key, so I positioned the tag just below where I keep another tag that commands my phone to turn on my map an increase its brightness. The duress tag alerts the authorities and tweets out a duress message to friends and followers on social media. As you can see from the video it is place in a way where I can't accidentally activate the duress command. Imagine a scenario where the phone is mounted on the phone holder while I'm carjacked. The bad guy asks for the phone and I have an opportunity to grab the phone and place it on the tag for a second to activate my duress. I stall the attacker until the authorities arrive. I set the phone to activate the duress with the screen locked out when activated with no speakers on and only the microphone working.

Here is the pic of where my tags are located inside my vehicle:

A couple of great links to where you can buy some tags.

http://www.amazon.com/NFC-tags-Writea...

http://www.tagstand.com/

There are also a number of apps to use. I use Trigger. See the link below to download it from the Google Play Store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

The thing about NFC tags is they are very inexpensive and relatively easy to implement. Almost a perfect security tool when properly used.

To learn more about NFC tags:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_fi...

Be sure to check out my blog for my DIY security projects and security related topics - http://blog.thesecuritydialogue.org

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