Old-RFID access control

Bloominglabs has built and will soon activate an RFID access control system. Our system is loosely based on Open Access Control designed by the 23B Shop hackerspace. We needed to get this operational as quickly as possible. Once we found their design we made our own minimized designed based on that. The goal was not a masterpiece of engineering, but something quick and dirty that would get the job done. We also wanted something that could operate completely standalone if necessary and still log access, so we added the SD card to our design.

Features

RFID access control of 2 doors in our building
Stand-alone logging capability (via the SD card)
USB connectivity for logging to IRC/Twitter/etc when the host PC is running
UPS battery backup for emergency access during power outages

Hardware

ATMega328 based on Arduino code from Open Access Control with our own modifications
Wiegand26 RFID readers
Generic electric door strikes
Uses shielded CAT5 for connectivity of RFID reader and electric strike operation

Software

We will post our code soon. Currently it is based on v 1.16 of Open Access Control for Arduino.

Steve has done a number of server side tweaks. See RFID System Software.

Completed Controller

Here you can see the ATMega328 which makes up an Arduino on a breadboard. Five volt regulator sits at the top in the middle. The headers just above the ATMega is for a SparkFun FTDI breakout for programming the Arduino and logging to a PC. The relays on the left side of the board enable the electric door strikes. On the right are RJ45 ports which allow the CAT5 to be used to connect the RFID reader and door strikes (one port for each door).

RFID board

Board is installed in the enclosure. You can see an Adafruit I2C real-time-clock hanging off to the left and an SD card reader board sitting on top of the relays.