RFID Door - 1 of n

Often times an office finds the struggle of granting access to rooms without jeopardizing physical copies of keys. These struggles can be easily overcome with technologies such as facial recognition, finger print recognition, bar codes, radio frequency identification, and much more.
Here at I Heart Engineering, we felt the need to have awesome badges fit our daily attire, where we can have both style and access to our offices without the need of weighty keys by building a robot door.

Using the Arduino Ethernet along with Adafruit's PN-532 RFID/NFC Breakout Board, the badges were a mere grasp away from reality.

A circuit involving a relay powering 12vDC@1A to a RCI S65 electromagnetic door lock. The circuit was mounted onto an Arduino Protoboard alongside a circuit connecting the PN-532 breakout board to the Arduino.

Part	Price
Arduino POE Ethernet	$69.95
Adafruit PN-532 Breakout Board	$39.95
Arduino Proto Shield	$4.95
RCI S65 Electric Strike	$107.00
100~240VAC => 12vDC@1A Power Supply	$11.77
Tyco Electronics SPST Power Relay	$2.21
Total	$235.83*

*For single components, not including tax, shipping and handling, or packaged components

After the circuit above was tested on a breadboard, it was then put onto a protoboard and the Arduino set was completed. The speaker and variable resistor were used for key tones, hooked up to pin 7. This is not necessary, but it helps when debugging.

Left: Arduino Ethernet   Middle: Protoboard w/ circuit   Right: PN-532 Breakout Board

Bottom-side of the protoboard and the PN-532 breakout board

Put together into a neat package, ready for mounting

Now that the Arduino package is assembled, mounting of the rfid reader takes place. Using some masking tape and wire, a rough mounting test was enacted.

Test of mounting positions within the wall

A square was cut out into the door frame, and the RCI S65 was installed into the door frame, then hooked up to the Arduino protoboard.

Held into the aluminum with a series of screws, the lock became a neat addition to the door frame

Now we can print out our badges, put on an RFID tag, and program the UID and data into the Arduino.

Laminated identification card

Future plans include:

• Ethernet support, adding a control panel.
• Logging of cards (usage, amount of usage, etc)
• Time frames
• Proper mounting plate
• Genuine People Personality

Arduino code is available on the Github Repository. Stay tuned for more features.