DoorServer

[davidf]

At our last meeting we installed an electronic door latch and Nathan tested unlocking the latch with an Arduino and a relay.

   

Last night I decided to try and take the various parts around the lab and make a wireless entry system. This is what I came up with.

   
   

I used the webduino library to set up a simple web server on the Arduino. The Arduino is connected to a Cisco wireless router. To enter the building, a person simply needs to connect to the router on their phone, go to the webpage of the device, and enter a code, at which point the Arduino will unlock the door for 5 seconds.

Admittedly, this is a pretty round-about way to get into the building, but serves as a proof of concept.

   

I also looked into adding encryption to make this system secure against packet sniffing, but I believe it may be too memory intensive for the Arduino in the current configuration because it would have to serve up the Javascript code enabling client-side encryption/hashing of the password, as well as server-side decryption. There are a number of Arduino libraries available for encryption (see SipHash, AVR-Crypto-Lib, etc), but they all would work well only for encryption/decryption on the Arduino. Serving up an entire Javascript encryption library seems like too much work to me.

The next step for this project will be to connect the Arduino into the building network so that a person can connect to the spokanecreate domain to enter the building, rather than having to connect to a wifi network. The goal is to tie the door entry system to our member login / payment system, to make seamless access to the building for building. Putting the login system on the website will also allow SSL / HTTPS for a much more secure entry system.