Door control

My door control and alarm system has made some progress.

The main change is making access control a bit more distinct from alarm system. The doors at the office were "falling off" the WiFi occasionally, even if only for a few seconds at a time, a few times a day.

I suspect that can be fixed, and it makes a huge difference what channels we use. The AP report something like 60 interfering APs.

So the change is to make the doors work autonomously which means the door controller has to be able to authenticate the fob/card used but also know enough to tell if it is allowed access.

I have actually created six levels of integration and autonomy for door control linking to alarm system.

This means things like times of day, depending on day of week, which doors they can access, and expiry dates and the like (i.e. some way to be sure a lost card is now invalid).

However, the DESFire cards are a challenge at best. I cannot have any operation that produces an error as that kills the authentication. So I have to only read files that exist, and only read the right length of the file, etc.

My original design was to have files for various aspects of security. Allowed doors; Barred doors; Start and end times; Start date/time; expiry date/time. The idea wast to get the file ID list and decide what to check depending on what files existing.

But even that is a challenge if any files can be variable length. The allowed/barred lists are like this, as are other files. So you have to check the file size for each file first.

Before you know it you are doing dozens of operations to the card, each taking tens of milliseconds.

So I ended up making a system that uses a single "access file", which I expect to exist. I ask the size and then read it. In that file I encode the various things I need like allowed and barred doors, and access times. But it is just those two operations on the card and hence a quick operation.

The end result is an autonomous door control system on an ESP8266 based door controller. It even has expiry update so that a card not used for X days expires. I obviously have blacklisting, but that also zaps the file if a blacklisted card is used.

The next step is some key roll-over logic as well as extra belt-and-braces old card expiry logic.

This is giving a fast enough process for door control. Yay!

Upgrading the scales to WiFi and RFID

I have now taken things a bit further with my scales upgrade. Not just WiFi, but RFID as well.

This means that instead of pressing send, you tap a card or key fob on the scales.

The scales then send the weight and card ID over HTTPS to a server that puts the details in a database. My previous video showed that I connected a wire to the SEND key for this reason. As it happens it needs a small diode in line so the processor does not get upset at power on, but other than that it works as planned, and was pretty simple.

This is great when the scales are used by everyone in the family, and the next step is some nice graphs and so on. James is working on that.

Of course, whilst this is fun, this suddenly starts to have GDPR implications. For "personal" use we are probably fine, but the second you extend it (e.g. taking to Slimming World to show off, as James is planning) you create fun an games with GDPR. I  can see the "SEND" button being re-labelled "CONSENT" and the privacy policy being labelled on the scales as well.

None the less, a good proof of concept and a fun tech project. I wonder if Slimming World, or Weight Watchers, and Marsden, are interested in teaming up with us and making a complete package. Saves taking laptops to meetings, and the cards are easy to brand :-)

This is how it is done...