We love the doors on Star Trek’s Enterprise. We should have known they were human-operated though because they were too smart. They would wait for people, or fail to open when someone was thrown against them during a fight. [SieuweE] has a much more practical automatic door that he calls ArduDoor.

You might guess from the name it uses an Arduino. It also uses a windshield wiper motor which is perfect since it is high-torque and low speed. You might even be able to pick one up for little or nothing if you frequent the junkyards.

The downside is that it takes 12A of current to operate the motor at 12V, however that’s the price to pay for a high-torque motor. [SieuweE] is using an ATX power supply to run it which isn’t terribly convenient, but is easy to source and use.

The Arduino and ultrasonic sensor are pretty standard fare, but the welded door opening mechanism is where the real work lies in this project. Of course, your door will vary so you might have to get a little creative if you want to duplicate the ArduDoor.

Of course, you could do a lot in addition to (or instead of) the ultrasonic. [SieuweE] says he’ll have the door Cortana-controlled soon. We were thinking of things like Bluetooth detection or even using OpenCV or some other method to recognize your face approaching the door.