Face recognition is an exciting field of computer vision with many possible applications to hardware and devices. Using embedded platforms like the Raspberry Pi and open source computer vision libraries like OpenCV, you can now add face recognition to your own maker projects! In this project I'll show you how to build a treasure box which unlocks itself using face recognition running on a Raspberry Pi.

Before you get started with this project, it will help to familiarize yourself with a few things:

• If you haven't setup or used a Raspberry Pi, go through the tutorials on learning the Raspberry Pi like preparing an SD card, network setup, and using SSH before attempting this project. Also take a look at the lesson on using a servo for more background on how servos work.
• Skim the OpenCV tutorial on face recognition for an idea of how face recognition algorithms work. Don't worry, you don't need to fully understand the math or code to build and learn from this project.

This is a learning project for fun and not suited for real security duty. In addition to the basics of computer vision, you’ll learn vital concepts like the occasional false positive, false negative and spoofing. It’s exciting that we can explore computer vision at the hobbyist level now…but it takes work to get right!

Continue on to learn about the hardware needed to build this project.