Open Your Hackerspace Door With A Phone Call

elabHackerspaceDoor

[Mário] sent us a tip detailing the access control system he and his friends built for the eLab Hackerspace in Faro, Portugal. The space is located in the University of Algarve’s Institute of Engineering, which meant the group couldn’t exactly bore some holes through campus property and needed a clever solution to provide 24/7 access to members.

[Mário] quickly ruled out more advanced Bluetooth or NFC options, because he didn’t want to leave out members who did not have a smartphone. Instead, after rummaging around in some junk boxes, the gang settled on hacking an old Siemens C55 phone to serve as a GSM modem and to receive calls from members. The incoming numbers are then compared against a list on the EEPROM of an attached PIC16F88 microcontroller, which directs a motor salvaged from a tobacco vending machine to open the push bar on the front door. They had to set up the motor to move an arm in a motion similar to that of a piston, thus providing the right leverage to both unlock and reset the bar’s position.

Check out [Mário’s] blog for more details and information on how they upload a log of callers to Google spreadsheets, and stick around for a quick video demonstration below. If you’d prefer a more step by step guide to the build, head over to the accompanying Instructables page. Just be careful if you try to reproduce this hack with the Arduino GSM shield.

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Arduino Keypad Door Automation

arduino door pad

[Andrea] just sent us this great student hack he made for his room. He’s constructed an Arduino keypad door lock — without using any proper fastening hardware!

The entire build is made out of scrap parts he had lying around: some DVD’s, a bit of wood, an allen key, a motor and belt from a broken printer, an old hard drive enclosure, and a few power supplies. As you can see the entire setup is held up rather artistically using good old duct tape.

The system auto-locks after 5 seconds, and just in case, [Andrea] has hard-coded in a few safety codes into the firmware to allow him to forcefully open the door — you know, if it malfunctions or something. Not overly confident in his code, he also has it reset every 5 minutes of idling to safeguard against potential memory leaks — probably a good idea! All in all it’s a very cool build, and we have to give him props for not damaging the door to mount it! Down the road he’s also planning on adding a knock sensor using the small speaker that is already part of the circuit, because, why not?

Stick around after the break to see this magnificent contraption that would make Red Green proud.

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