Access Control Systems

Tips

Systems should be made to open or close 12V relays and can be set to stay "open" for up to 9000 seconds so I can set the length of time before you have to re-auth a machine. The circuit on the machine would self power the relay so it would never turn the tool off while it was on (say mid-cut or mid-CNC job) but once turned off, the user would have to re-key it to turn it back on again outside of the machine specific window (might be 5 minutes on a table saw, a half hour on a wood lathe, etc)

One way to accomplish this is to wire a 5v coil 120V contact NO relay into the start button. So the mag switch functions as normal, but the start button output is interrupted until the relay gets the start signal. That way, the relay only needs to close for 15-30sec at most while someone reaches for the button. That way the login doesn't stay active after someone walks away after a quick cut. Shock mounting the box with the relay is important because you can hit it and bounce the relay closed. I've gotten that far, I just haven't figured out a good way to centralize authentication and manage it.

Another good feature that's easy to implement at the one arduino per door/machine level is to put in a little 2x16 display that always shows who used the machine last. Then people can't "forget to clean up"

Machine Access Systems

• London Hacker Space is said to have a machine access system
• Tinker Mill wrote their own. Available on GitHub
• It was reported that at RIT's makerspace students have a swipe card and must swipe into each machine before it will run. Mike Buffalin was mentioned as a contact.
• It was reported the MIT has a system, but "MIT's official system is prohibitively expensive, even for MIT."

Door Access Systems

• Milwaukee Maker Space has a door access system they are working to extend to machine access.
• AuthBox Google has developed an open source access control system.
• Que Lab the system we are currently using for our front door. We may in the future apply it to some of the big shop items and/or storage lockers.

Hardware

What specific hardware are you using to lock doors, enable machines, read tags, etc?