Power is easy, lots of options
I just need to figure out if I can toggle the driver board somehow, if I can’t do that… everything gets a LOT more involved real fast
I’m assuming if I just tried to jump positions 1 by 1 I would fry something?
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Just had a thought, I might be able to super cheat the system
The control board tries to make sure the locking bars are in locked posistion
If you halfway close the safe, and hit the lock button, and the action bars jam… it won’t trigger the stop switch… it will jam for 10 seconds or so before giving up and going to sleep
When you wake it up, it will automatically move the bars again until it hits the end switch, from its perspective fixing a jammed position
Here’s the spit ball idea, if I use the XAC to create an open circuit on the stop switch… the safe will think it’s out of position and run the motor till it hits a stop switch…. And given it’s a circular cam… if the closed switch doesn’t register… it will happily keep going, which turns into opening direction
If I’m super lucky, it will accept the open stop switch, otherwise it might continue past….
But it’s a start of an idea
Hey @Eriequiet it looks like that Q2 MOSFET in the top right of the main board is driving the motor. Get a voltmeter and place the black lead on a GND pad and the red lead on the gate pin of the MOSFET (the one near R3) and then cause the lock to open. See what voltage that is and then if you can hook a wire from your access controller to there through a voltage divider (the series resistor of which should probably be 1k ohm like R3) then you should be able to trigger it. SMT MOSFETs like that usually have a pinout that if the drain bump is on top the pins from left to right are: Gate, Drain, Source. If it’s an N-channel MOSFET like that one appears to be it’s downstream from the load with drain connected to the load and Source connected to GND
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I understand like 75% of that lol, but I can investigate as instructed
Appreciate the help
Once I get home I’ll measure with a voltmeter,
You might need to explain in more simple terms what I’m doing after that to trick it lol
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That will run the motor but this does not imply that the lock will open. This safe uses a cam that turns in only one direction and to microswitches to detect the state of the mechanism:
If it wasn’t for the mechanical details that I mentioned above, that would be too complicated; connecting one of the motor terminals to ground is all that it takes to drive the thing.
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So it seems to me that you have three possible options here.
- Use a microcontroller to tap into the stop switches and control the motor and have an XAC (or just program it to also handle RFID reading tasks). You can then remove the security panel entirely.
Or
- as above but have this as a secondary option for driving the same motor.
Or
- see if you can work out the interface between the motor controller board and the security panel board. Then you can hopefully use that interface directly, removing the security board from the equation.
Seeing their use of a simple cam for opening/closing the bolts, I would not be surprised if the stop switches were NC switches in series with the motor power, and they have a second “start” signal which is in parallel with that. They hit the start signal for a second, the motor starts moving the bolt, the open switch closes, and the start signal drops. The motor keeps running until the other stop switch opens.
Great, except I have no understanding of micro controllers
No, the switches go to the big 5 pin JST connector that’s next to the MCU. But this is exactly what I would’ve suggested if @Eriequiet wasn’t planning to keep the original fingerprint reader and keypad. But it might still be doable with a pair of additional switches.
What happens if you turn the motor manually to unlock it? How does the original controller react? Can you lock the safe with it if it’s unlocked manually?
I know the switches connect to the JST, but I still wouldn’t put it past them to go for something really simple to make it work. 
@satur9
I get .5 - .6v on that mosfet when it runs
Also the close sequence definitely only stops on the close switch, not either… so my cheat method would be pretty janky
Do you know what voltage the safe operates on?
4x aa in series so 6v
Also checked, not a shocker, but the motor runs continuously if power applied… it’s just a motor after all
Just answering peoples questions
The stop switch’s are also NO, and share a ground back it looks like
@enginerd you asked how the board reacts to out of posistion… near as I can tell, it only cares until it reaches the stop switch… once it’s it stops caring about posistion
Until you wake it back up, if it doesn’t see the closed stop switch depressed. It will run until it does ignoring the open stop switch
A microcontroller sounds like a great idea, If someone wants to lend me some aid 
Unless @satur9 thinks that if you trigger the mosfet the system will still stop like normal
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I suspect a bunch of people here can help with the microcontroller if you want. Sounds like the best path forward. I have experience training people on using Arduino if you want to sit down for like 2 hours over a video call.
Otherwise TinkerCAD circuits is a low cost way to mess around with it, and there’s plenty of tutorials online
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I’m down to give it a shot,
I’m not opposed to learning,
But I can’t underestimate that it’s something that this is something that just doesn’t absorb easily into my brain
It’s like teaching algebra to a chimp
And I’m potentially looking at a timeline of wanting to get this done by end of June, so I can have it ready for a demo at a biohacker village
If you want to make something really simple, you could add another stop switch, but in this case make it NC, place it in series with the relay of an xACv2 using the COM and NO contacts, and use this to short the negative terminal of the motor to the negative of the battery.
The idea here is that the xAC will run the motor until the additional switch turns it off. And this allows you to keep the original electronics in place, even if it’s a little janky. From what I understand, Waking up the safe should lock it so you don’t need to worry about this on the RFID side.
However, I’ll still encourage you to learn how to use basic microcontrollers as those things are very useful. Do note that I’m more of a PIC guy in this regard.
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“Experts in anything wildly overestimate the average persons familiarity with their field”
Remember how you wanted me to check to ground?
There is nothing immediately labeled ground and it took me… time… to think about it lol
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Yeah, I thought about that when I said it. I tried to find a convenient pad to suggest from your picture, but the “alarm” GND pad is not connected because they didn’t populate it’s appropriate transistor, the various power connectors might not have been at the correct voltage, and the piezo GND was on the opposite side from Q2 so it would have been awkward to measure. I could have suggested the Source pin on Q2, but I wasn’t certain that was connected to GND and I didn’t want you to take my instructions as written in stone guidance. I left it up to your interpretation.
See, it’s just as hard to know too much as it is to know not enough. I’m very much aware howb little people know about my field. It’s an important perspective to master, because if you don’t you won’t assume the same about your knowledge of other people’s field. I just assume everything is difficult for everybody and I usually get by
Ok so, trying not to get demoralized
Where do I even start? So far I understand next to nothing about microcontrollers or arduinos (they are the same right?)
I want to stay with 125khz
I like the xac because of its range, and it’s nice to use something that’s a go to for projects, that dt sells… and I want to use the project to help show project possibilities
but I’m not married to it because of the power requirements
Speaking of power, I want to make sure the microcontroller/arduino doesn’t suck juice when it’s
Not active
I need a micro controller that does
Signal. Closes motor power circuit until stop switch 1 and then opens motor power
Signal. Closes motor power circuit until stop switch 2 and then opens motor power
I keep thinking there’s gotta be a way to wire it analog, but it keeps feeing just out of reach of materializing
Also given that I need essentially 2 circuits that swap based on stop switches…The concern is it would immediately flip to the other circuit and keep powering the motor and not stop
I could use 2x xacs one to run the motor till stop switch 1 and the other to run the motor till stop switch 2, but that’s a clumsy solution
Perhaps one of the flip flop latching relays I can never figure out… to switch circuits on each xac activation
Sigh, I remember why I stoped pursing this project a while back