Door Entry Project
From HacDC Wiki
Note that, as a point of distinction from the Physical Access Control Project, this project's scope includes the whole church, its staff and tenants.
There was a meeting in the space at 1pm on Saturday, 6 December 2008 to start prototyping the Asterisk back-end.
Discussion is taking place on the red door mailing list.
Current plans
As per a discussion Nate had with Brian on Tuesday, December 16th, here are the current plans:
Requirement: the person doing the unlocking must see the guest before opening the door. So, unlocking by phone is not permissible. Either get video on screen, or just walk downstairs and see 'em through the window.
Outside: All that's needed is a camera, a keypad, and a place Brian can stick a printed directory page. Two-way audio (speakerphone at the outside panel) would be nice too but isn't a strict requirement.
When a guest dials a suite number: (which will be a 1 or 2 digit number, probably followed by the star or pound key) Our system should place a call over the PSTN to ring whoever's associated with that space. The suite-number-to-phone-number lookup table will be maintained by Brian.
When the phone is answered: It'd be nice to have two-way audio to the panel, so the answerer can talk to the guest and ascertain who they are. BUT UNLOCKING CANNOT BE DONE BY PHONE. See "requirement", above.
To unlock the door: The answerer (or anyone else) can just walk downstairs and open the door, OR pull up video over the web, and after having visually confirmed the guest's identity, the answerer can enter their PIN on the website and unlock the door that way.
Any authorized user can just enter their PIN at the keypad and let themself in, of course. (Yeah, I know that's not a word. Bite me, English language!)
Caveat: The answerer could just tell their PIN to the guest over the phone, couldn't they? To prevent this, and enforce the face-view requirement, perhaps the keypad could refuse to accept PINs for a while after dialing a suite number.
Ideally: Video from the panel camera will be split, so it can be digitized by the web video server AND by the surveillance recorder in Brian's office, which is NOT connected to the internet.
Diagrams
