For the PA Governor's annual STEM competition, I was chosen to represent Bishop Shanahan High School as a member of their STEM team. The goal of the competition was to create something that would help PA. Our team of seven members along with an advisor chose to create a system to automatically unlock doors in the event of a fire. This idea came about after a tragic fire burned down a local senior care facility, where firefighters were slowed down by a large number of locked doors.
Using a few sensors as well as a solenoid lock, our project was able to detect the presence of a fire and automatically unlock an outfitted door. The detection and unlocking were done over a network of Arduino based sensors. This would allow firefighters to save precious time that they spend breaking down doors and bring more people to safety. Our project took 1st place within the Chester county regional competition, which allowed us to move on and take 4th place at the state-level competition.