NFC reader with Home Assistant

I have option 1,3,4 on the board now. We can skip 2 (I assume the i2c pins are the same)

Perfect! I’m excited to see how it turns out! What would you think about making a LED ring part of the standard design and adjust the code so the light spins clockwise with each scan? An aesthetic piece to stand out from the other Home Assistant readers. It would be cool to put it where the antenna is but that would interfere with the range (not including the Evolution v1 since the antenna is massive). I am a huge fan of aesthetics but I understand it isn’t important so no need to alter the design for LED’s. Just a fun idea :slight_smile:

My idea was to make it as small as possible, that’s the only reason I haven’t added a bunch of stuff to the board. That was the idea behind the extra RGB headers. That way you can put the lights wherever you want (even on top of the ESP or the reader)

Here is the current design that works with most of the readers


You can also see that I moved the 12v system to the back of the board and moved the pads up so that it’s less likely to short (I had an issue with that)

On the back here you can see the LED bypass bridge. If you want to skip the onboard LED then you short this out and use the extra RGB headers. When I added the different readers I did have to make the board slightly wider to get them all to fit. The buzzer was also moved since it was going to be under a reader regardless. So now you can mount it on the back, or run wires and put a buzzer wherever you need it.

As a side project I might also make it fit a arduino pro micro so that you can use the board as a generic USB scanner that emulates a keyboard. But that might be a branch. I’m not sure how much this board should be a “Do it all” board. An arduino keyboard scanner could be made much smaller.

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Good call. I wasn’t thinking too much about size. How does one go about shorting the LED bridge? (Sorry I’m new to all of this) I like the idea of keeping this design simple and then creating a 2nd design with an arduino for the USB scanner. I’ll be happy with whatever you decide! You are doing an amazing job!

jumpers
This is how they work. you just put a bit of solder connecting the 2 sides of the bridge.

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Super easy!

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Just a heads up the V4 boards from ElectroHouse a significantly better than any other version (in my experience).

My V4 vs any of the countless knockoffs i have has double if not triple the range and is much better at coupling with x series

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@W-rabbit - what lock are you using on your bedroom door. Is the reader custom?

The door lock is the METechs MID300 but I had to remove the front plastic piece to get it to read my NExT’s. The readers are built specifically for Home Assistant



New readers are in! Going to test with these then make the board match all of them. Then I’ll start making versions with different controllers.

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Super excited!!

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I finally received the version 4 reader in the mail and slapped it together. The STLs at DTcommunityWIFIreader/Printables at main · benbeezy/DTcommunityWIFIreader · GitHub were too small for my board. I ended up drawing a new case to fit it. You can find the STL here if it helps any:

I’m really digging this! Good job.

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@Ben_bionic What LED are you using for U2 on your board?

WS2812B

100 is a lot so I pulled mine off of another project I had around. Also ordering from Amazon would probably be cheaper.

You can also use the 3 pin headers in the corner to control a full light strip if you want to avoid soldering tiny things. I used a heat gun on the bottom of the board to reflow the LED because the pads behind on the bottom make it hard to solder.

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I finally got to scratch the itch to try this and installed Home Assistant on a Raspberry PI and I can see that the PN532 V3 is not impressive but it does the job.

Now what? Hopefully I’m not the only cyborg living in a dumb old house. This seems pretty useful for an alarm or in combination with a smart lock and a UPS or two. Murphy’s law states that you’ll end up in the rain during a power outage otherwise.

But I should probably look into more ideas on what to do with HA.

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I got my first implant when I had an apartment complex that has everything key fobbed and loved it! Spent the last year in a dumb apartment complex lol
Looking for a new apartment now and my main concern is having a smart lock XD
I’ve been wanting to set up some home assistant stuff and scratch that itch too. Been following to see what others do to build a to do list.

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I feel that most(if not all) electronic entry/exit systems should always have a way to allow passage when power fails(like getting a lock with a physical key in addition to the electronic system)

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I was thinking about that today and thought about how many times I have drilled out a lock at work because someone lost a key.
I was thinking of a a key cylinder backup that had pins too long for the sheer line of the core in order to be picked, but you could drill out the core in order to reach the turning mechanism for the latch. If you drilled out the core, then you could unlock the door, and barring any over drilled spots, you could replace the coren.
That would rely upon design of the lock to accommodate a standard core, but would eliminate any picking attempt, though you would need to have access to a drill.

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I’ll see if I can’t take a picture of a lock tomorrow, but we have “cabinet” locks where you insert the key and twist, then the cabinet is unlocked, and you can take the core out at the same time. It’s a good design for our work so we can just insert a new core if we want to change the keys for the cabinets within the market, or if one is so old that that no one has the key, we can drill it out and replace the core without replacing the locking mechanism.