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So, we’ve now got a working prototype built.  It does the following bits:

  1. Allows us to remotely trigger the door lock mechanism from a smartphone.
  2. Sends us notification alerts via Push to our smartphone.

Bits still pending:

  1. Smartphone to wall box communication (via panel Mic wire).
  2. Wall box to smartphone communication (via panel Speaker wire).

After doing some research on how to best accomplish a bunch of these tasks I stumbled upon an awesome library that is taking care of a lot of the heavy lifting for me: Blynk.

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So, first of all let me state for the record I had 3 Grande House Margaritas this evening, one of which was a Coronarita, and I may be a little incoherent at this point.

Down to business: we have a working prototype alpha of the Remote Building Entry Unlocker.  It doesn’t do anything fancy.  If you push the button at the door, it rings the buzzer, lights up the unit, and then unlocks the door.  Woo!

It is a little more complex than one would expect, since the Arduino can’t sense above 5v, and the door panel is 12v.  Also the Arduino native ports can’t really trigger a relay coil off anything not the 5v rail (though I suppose I could have just used a pin as ground with a toggle on that, but it’s neither here nor there).

Here’s the build and code.

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Sooooooo last night my roommate and I started talking about ways to make entry/exit of the apartment easier, and I brought up Smart Door Locks. This naturally led us to a discussion of how we could get someone into the actual building so we could then let them use the Smart Door Lock to get into our specific apartment.

He mentioned it would be cool to have some sort of remote control for the buzzer/intercom system and I said it’s so funny you say that because I’ve been thinking about that too.  I said, it’s probably a simple wire jumper that triggers it.

Well, I was right.  And now I have a new project to work on. 🙂  This will be an on-going series, because I think this is fscking awesome.

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Republicans encounter angry citizens after killing online privacy rules.

Source: Why one Republican voted to kill privacy rules: “Nobody has to use the Internet” | Ars Technica

Filed from the “Is Anybody Actually Surprised At This Point” Department.

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This is once again a recipe I’ve pulled from Reddit, and reproducing here for posterity’s sake.  It is a recipe I’ve made exactly once, but it is VERY tasty and I’m very happy with it (except the Blueberry Compote which came out more like a Blueberry Sauce, but I think I have a fix for that).

As always, the result comes before the instructions.

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