Has a psion5, brilliant tech. Loved it. The calendar was way ahead of its time, 2AA batteries gave weeks of life and you could just about touch type on the keyboard. If I could get it to synch with office I’d be tempted to dig it out again, it really was the future.

I have a couple of setups, one has poe ip cams writing to a surveillance nvr which looks after motion detect etc. The other system relies on the camera software detecting motion and writing to a Nas.

Both systems are on their own subnet and are firewalled from everything else. I VPN as and when required.

I’ve found motion detect with alerts to be difficult to tune to get good detection without false alarms.

Not sure I understand the problem fully, but you want a circuit to operate when you push the horn button, without affecting the horn operation.

Chances are the relay coil is drawing to much power.

Have you thought about adding a transistor to your circuit? It would draw very little current from the horn circuit but should allow you to drive something else. - such as your relay. It would of course require you to do some electronics.

Ermmm… If you use several pins to get the current rating, what happens if one of the pins fails or gets corroded? Won’t you risk generating heat? Think I’d prefer nice big connectors for the power and to keep the data lines safely segregated. Depends on your needs and design I suppose.

Brilliant, many thanks. With all the old phones in my cupboards I’d hoped this was the answer, but it’s good to get a second opinion.

Butt your enclosure right up against the lock body, then you reduce shearing forces trying to pull it off the door. Extend the pull bar through your enclosure so you still have a manual override.

While I’m not adverse to home automation, is this something you need in your life, or just want? I like my perimeter security too be simple and tight, extra complications make the security audit much harder.

Will your insurance stand up to home made remote control unlocking?

To answer your question, place the servo in a suitably large enclosure and practically any adhesive should work, e.g. 3mM command strips or even velcro or double sided sticky. When confident that this is what you want, use a screw.

Do you on now anyone who uses disposable vapes? There may be a useful battery in one of those if you can’t find an alternative.

Why wasn’t there security on the device? My works devices are password protected and it’s a disciplinary offence if I share passwords or give unauthorized access.

If he gave them the login creds, then he should be penalised .

If he logged in and gave the device to non parliamentary staff, he should also be penalised.

He got caught because it cost money, which is the lesser offence. Cyber security should be more robust for ministers than it is for most companies, but seemingly not.

The PI is always a good place to start, but they’re not cheap anymore. You can still do some useful things at the command line (not sure how fun, but a great education), python is there and very accessible. - get a camera and you could do some great things with open CV. Not sure what packages are out there though. Think you’d just have to follow some web tutorials.

As an alternative, have you considered an Arduino kit? Lots of great projects, all very well documented. Playing with LEDs, sensors, motors etc may keep their attention longer than a bash prompt.