DoorMigo
Bluetooth Dorm Door Opener · Fall 2025 · GEEN 1400 First-Year Projects
Overview
A BLE-enabled ESP32 device that attaches to the inside of a dorm room door, allowing students to open it from their phone. Designed for CU Boulder's automatic locking doors. Section Winner at the Fall 2025 Design Expo.
Skills Used
Results
- 50/50 successful test openings
- ~3 second opening time
- $255 under budget
- Section Winner, Fall 2025 IDE Expo
Started with 5V plastic gearmotor (50s open). Swapped to 12V metal worm-gear (0.7–0.9 N·m) for a 3-second open, 16x improvement.
3D-printed clamp with rubberized friction interfaces. 40-lb fishing line prevents fraying. Cover stops line despooling during manual door use.
ESP32 with 11.1V battery. H-bridge routes current, encoder feedback detects stops. PWA communicates over BLE, no app store needed.
Media Gallery
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Background & Motivation
CU dorms have automatic locking doors requiring the Buff One card at all times. Forgetting it costs $5 for a temp key. Our five-person team designed DoorMigo for GEEN 1400: a small adhesive-mounted device controlled by phone that eliminates the need to carry the keycard for routine trips.
Personal Development
I led circuit design and programming. Coming from breadboards, I learned full schematic design and soldering onto perf board. My teammates built the PWA from scratch with no coding experience. We applied torque, static equilibrium, and shear force equations to validate the design.
Challenges & Results
Iterated through motor, line, and clamp designs. Final prototype achieved 50 consecutive successful openings with zero adhesive failure. Won Section Winner at the Design Expo, $255 under budget.
Next Steps
Developing toward a CU product launch. Priorities: BLE 5.0 encryption, universal clamp, firmware sleep modes, and a rent-and-return business model aligned with circular sustainability.