The FurGuard Dog Door aims to address blatant household safety concerns associated with the ownership and operation of a dog door. As stated in the Herald Sun, “more than 30 properties… have been broken into either by thief squeezing through one of these devices [dog doors] or reaching inside with a wire or other implement to unlock a nearby door”. Furthermore, Senior-Sergeant Daly of the CIU (Crime Investigation Unit) in Melbourne states “People need to be aware, they need to lock the doggie door if they can, or perhaps block access if they are out for a long period of time”. My proposed device, the FurGuard Dog Door, aims to eliminate household safety concerns associated with ownership and operation of a dog door, easing homeowner’s state of mind as well as safety of family and belongings, while also not comprising dog’s ease-of-access and freedom to exit and enter the home. The FurGuard Dog Door achieves this through the automated unlocking and locking of a pre-existing dog door with two electromagnets. By utilizing a HC-SR501 motion sensor the device detects movement while utilizing the OV2640 camera to capture an image of anything present at the doorstep. With the photo, the device sends an API POST request to an externally hosted neural network, built with Google’s Vertex AI, which has been trained to identify whether either of my dogs are present at the doorstep. If dogs are present, the system turns off the electromagnets holding the door shut via a relay and allows the door to open. Conversely, if the neural network deduces anything other than my dogs are present it remains locked denying any unwelcome guest. While the system protects those inside the house, it also utilizes an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor to detect whether any dog is travelling through the door before re-locking, as well as a second HC-SR501 motion sensor to detect whether a dog wishes to exit from inside the house. In summary, the FurGuard Dog Door nullifies previous safety concerns over dog door ownership, while also leaving dogs’ ease-of-access and safety uncompromised with respective dog-detection technology and the subsequent automated locking of the dog door.

1) 90% Successful Dog Detection Rate o 90% of dogs present at the doorstep will be imaged and correctly identified by the neural network, thus returning a ‘dog’ or ‘none’ value
2) 95% Safety Rate o The door will remain unlocked/de-powered as dogs pass through with 95% consistency
3) 100% Door Lock/Unlock Rate o After receiving the ‘dog’ value from the neural network, the door will execute the correct unlock sequence o After receiving the ‘none’ value from the neural network, the door will execute the correct locking sequence
4) 100% Motion Detection Rate o The system will execute code 100% of the time in response to both indoor and outdoor motion
5) Durability o The system will remain completely operational after 8 hours of use outdoors.