I’ve been out for the past two weeks in San Francisco for our West Coast team building event and a week at the beach with the family. Wow. I feel really good. It has been a long time since I had some time to read 4 books and actually sleep in. I think I caught up on at least a year’s sleep deprivation.
While I was away it got a bit hot here in Chattanooga. That means air conditioning is priority #1 at the *space. Anybody have a large (15-20k BTU) window unit to donate?
Priority #2 is security and that means I’ve got to spend some time programming an Arduino UNO to use my NFC/RFID transceiver. Then it is a simple matter of finding the right hardware/electronic latch. Which will require…
Priority #3 (usually #1 for me) is…internet connectivity. We will be talking with EPB to see if they want to support the makerspace. If not, we’ll just need to bite the bullet. Flowing packets is going to be a really major milestone.
I’m beat from 10 hours in the car with the whole family! Good night and have a great Memorial Day holiday!
Card access.
Check out northern computers N-1000 access control boards, they are stand alone systems that will handle a couple doors and any card reader you hook to it. I installed a half dozen of them where I use to work for daily use in a manufacturing environment, and it’s all UL approved for safety and insurance. I bought them used off eBay for 50-100 dollars per board which handled 2 doors each. Basically a 2 relay board with about 20 inputs.
They are not new, probably from the mid 90’s but they work like a charm.
I was given a copy of winpak pro to program them with, but the command lines would have worked just as well.
There are n-500 style boards too which I think are completely standalone and don’t need a terminal to program. But I’m not familiar with them though, and I only recently started to see them listed.
I’d use the arduino to write scripts and extract logs from the access boards.
Hope that helps With other options.
Joe
Good info, Joe. Thanks! Currently I’m working with the Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID controller breakout board (v1.3) connecting it to an Arduino Uno. I figured I’d get the programming figured out first then find a relay and electric latch of some sort to complete the build; along with a nice waterproof enclosure from the Makerbot. I’ll look into the N1000s though thanks for the tip!