Ideas for an access monitor/counter for a bank saftey deposit box?

Question

I recently aquired a safety deposit box at my local bank and would like to use it to store some items. After doing a few searches regarding the boxes, I found several accounts of unauthorized access occurring from bank employees.I was wondering if anyone knows of or has ideas for a device that I could leave inside the box that would keep count on the number of times the box is opened.It would have to be non resetting and reliable enough to not give false counts.Ideally a low power device that could operate for months or years without the need to change the battery that would record a time/date stamp of each time it was opened and closed.My only idea so far is some sort of light sensor tied to a data logger arduino setup with simple encryption but I am concerned the power consumption of an arduino may drain batteries too quickly even in sleep mode.Thoughts?

cjsawyer · Accepted Answer

You could just seal it. If the seal is broken then it was opened

1cvmask · Answer

You should have bigger fears of the feds and police confiscating everything in it under civil forfeiture laws:https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-19/fbi-seiz...https://archive.md/bLH4W

version_five · Answer

What about a photodiode (I think thats the name) - something that is high impedance when it's dark and conducts when its light, connected to a battery powered analog watch that you set to midnight?It would give you total time open, and you could either reset it or just write down the time whenever you opened the box yourself.

sircastor · Answer

On your logger idea, many microcontrollers have watchdog timers that can trigger a &ldquo;wake up and do this&rdquo; routine. You could have the controller wake up once every couple of seconds and check an LDR. Then go back to sleep. With well written code, you could easily get a year out of a coin-cell battery

f0e4c2f7 · Answer

I think ideally you would want something lower tech than that.Maybe some kind of mechanical counter that increments up one click each time the lid is closed on it.

Ideas for an access monitor/counter for a bank saftey deposit box?

You could just seal it. If the seal is broken then it was opened

You should have bigger fears of the feds and police confiscating everything in it under civil forfeiture laws:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-19/fbi-seiz...
https://archive.md/bLH4W

I think ideally you would want something lower tech than that.
Maybe some kind of mechanical counter that increments up one click each time the lid is closed on it.