Post by Hannah Fletcher

Tired of seeing campus burglary alerts flood our phones every week, my teammate and I decided to actually do something about it. ​Two weeks ago, we had the incredible opportunity to present our solution, “Bike Guardian,” at the IEEE Quarterly Projects Spring 2026 Showcase. Our focus for this quarter's Safety and Security theme was campus transportation theft. Inspired by seeing such large quantities of bike and scooter thefts, we knew we had to design something smarter than a standard physical lock. I'm also pleased to announce that we were able to win second place with this project! The Bike Guardian is a smart U-Lock system tailored to solve bike theft on campus. Built entirely on a $25 budget, the system features RFID authentication unlocking via key card using a PN532 module, a MPU-6050 accelerometer/gyroscope module for continuous tamper monitoring, and a live security dashboard hosted from an ESP32 microcontroller. Taking this from breadboard jumper wires to a fully soldered, 3D-printed prototype was a masterclass in rapid prototyping and hardware debugging. We spent a lot of time cycling through unreliable RFID modules and debugging before finally getting a working system with the PN532. ​One of my toughest challenges was actually tuning the MPU-6050 motion sensor. Initially, we had a calibrated baseline on startup. However, it interpreted basic changes in orientation as active motion, so even when the lock wasn't moving, it often exceeded the threshold of movement relative to our baseline. If the lock was mounted at a slightly different angle than where it was calibrated, the alarm would fire endlessly and keep looping even after hitting reset. To solve this, we completely overhauled our firmware logic to implement sustained movement detection with dynamic comparison rather than static calibration. This enabled the system to accurately differentiate between a harmless bump and a genuine theft attempt. Beyond the technical challenges, this experience taught me an invaluable lesson in agility and resilience. Our project originally started out with four members, but we ultimately ended up becoming a duo. Absorbing the entire workload of a four-person scope with just two people forced us to step up, scale our efforts, and trust each other's execution completely. Pivoting under pressure proved to me that a shared work ethic and tight communication matter just as much as the engineering itself. ​What happens when a two-person team takes on a room full of four-person squads with just a $25 budget? You walk away with 2nd place. Huge thanks to IEEE Student Branch at UC San Diego and my partner, Samuel Park, for an unforgettable quarter of building! #Engineering #EmbeddedSystems #IEEE #IoT #UCSD #ProductDesign #Teamwork