Nothing in particular really, just the encoding these readers use is dumb.
I’m going to have another sit down with it tomorrow to try and figure it out.
All the rs232 converters have arrived. I’ll be trialling one this weekend.
So thanks to @pelrun tonight we’ve deciphered the output from these readers in a meaningful way.
The hex string the reader outputs is just the hex conversion of the decimal card ID. Without the RS232 converter inline the hex bytes we were recieving were wrong and so we discounted that possibility at the time.
Basically I forgot to check that option after adding the rs232 converter breakouts online because I was too busy focusing on a few aliexpress pages with the same model of RFID reader that had stated the format was ABA TK2.
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Quick update,
- @rut4ger has installed most of the waterproof boxes and wiring (I suspect @Thermoelectric magically had something to do with it too)
- I’ve modified the code to work with the new readers, I’ll the committing it as a branch to keep things clean.
- There are a bunch of rs232 -> ttl converters already wired up from last tuesday by @rut4ger and I.
- There is a netrol installed on the green room back door but it isn’t communicating with the server properly. @lhovo and I will be sorting out what’s wrong tomorrow and then hopefully it should be just a case of pumping these out.
As a quick side note, we still need some real PoE gear to get most of the Netrols outside of the green room working.
Yeah short term we need more PoE ports, we only have 12 on the switch and 5 are already in use.
Quad door is up (And now has an exit button. The door needs a little jiggle to open atm because it needs shaving again. @Hally ?)
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Boneyard is up and running again with the new hardware. @Boo your PC in the creatorium has lost its network for now sorry 
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As of this weekend, @Thermoelectric worked his magic and got PoE in the big shed going and last night PoE in the boneyard building.
The digital fabrication room doors are now swipe enabled, as is the Metal shop and the CNC shop.
Just got creatorium, wood shop and the old welding shop doors to go 
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Wood Shop door is now live, please don’t lock the snib as it will prevent the door closing properly.
Quad door is also live, may not like the small tokens (Same issue as the metal shop sorry.)
Just need a door strike for the Creatorium installed and POE/box/reader for the old welding shop and we’re done with doors 
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There are a few more boxes in the server room if you need them
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I also need to go around and add exit buttons to a bunch.
Also gotta get the new ChemLab one in place.
Noticed in the wee small hours of last night the chem lab reader flashes a green light. This is situation normal?
If it’s consistant and the door isn’t unlocking, yeah.
There is a “heart beat” led on all units.
It’s there to say I’m working essentially and the code hasn’t locked up.
It’s sounding like its this led you have noticed.
The new RFID readers don’t have the ability to display this anymore. But the LED on the board should still be blinking away in its box.
So, updates! But first…
A history of our Access System
At HSBNE we have a few generations of dedicated networked hardware for RFID locks based on avr chips. All of them have operated with a really basic php + json flatfile db backend running on apache for the 4-5 years we’ve had them implemented. All have used the eeprom on the avr chip to store a db of approved cards in case the server went down for any reason (This happened a lot until we got to a premises we could designate a server room in).
First there was Snarc (http://old.hsbne.org/projects/SNARC) - It was single door focused, lacked filtering caps on the 5v and 3.3v regulators and overheated lots until we started putting rediculously huge heatsinks on it. (Yay graphics cards heatsinks!) It was also mosfet based, and the wiznet5500 module on it tended to randomly drop network, necessitating a wire fix to allow us to reset the ethernet every 5-10 minutes just in case.
Then there was Snarc+ (http://old.hsbne.org/projects/snarcplus) which is POE powered, designed by @lhovo and replaced the mosfet with a relay. For some reason it was kinda slow when it came to network comms and so you’d wait up until 30 seconds before your card ID was in the eeprom.
Now we have Netrol (http://circuitcellar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WZ1262_Project_Pic-150x150.jpg and https://github.com/lhovo/Netrol which is also designed by @lhovo . It’s sexy, can operate 12v door strikes and bolts with ease via PoE and is a nicely integrated system at this point. We have these installed in waterproof boxes with ip67 cable glands and waterproof external potted RFID coils that talk rs232. (We ended up giving several Snarc and Snarc+ boards viking burials after someone hot glued them against plywood boards and the weather got in.)
We’re now running entirely on Netrols (mostly) and Snarc+ boards at 12 different endpoints within our site and I’m currently implementing zone-control code on the server end that has been needed for a while.
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Updates!
I’ve implemented zone based access in the server side code in a scaleable way, such that adding a new zone is as simple as:
- Implementing the hardware
- Adding a new endpoint to the endpoint database
- Adding a new column to the access table for the new endpoint
Unfortunately the current SNARC codebase is like an elephant and won’t forget RFID tags it has been told are OK unless we tell it to forget everything. @buzz and I will be working on that on Tuesday.
On the upside though this means we can finally start implementing machine interlocks as part of the door system, so I can start focusing on those soon.
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Ok, more updates.
The CNC Shop Door decided to have a hissy fit yesterday when I told it to wipe its local database of cards and now the relay won’t switch. This happened just as I was leaving so I won’t be able to fix the hardware until Tuesday.
I used the wrong sql syntax on the update query to add people to the DB from the old Google Docs setup and every time someone pushed an update it reset everyone’s zone access to the defaults. This is now fixed, but the only place it would affect anyone is the CNC Shop door.
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