AcksessManager

From Hackerspace ACKspace
Revision as of 19:06, 13 March 2022 by Adnub (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
Project: AcksessManager
Featured: No
State Active
Members Adnub
GitHub No GitHub project defined. Add your project here.
Description System and software to manage Acksess 2.0 door controller
Picture
No project picture! Fill in form Picture or Upload a jpeg here

Purpose

We would like to have a more convenient way to manage the door controller and keep track of who exactly has which badge

Goals

  • Able to securely manage tags from local LAN
  • Menu driven UI (ncurses?)
  • Keeps track of when someone was added and which UID somebody has
  • You must present an admin tag at an Ackess door controller before any changes are applied.
  • Keeps a versioned backup of its CSV database on a network storage location

To be determined if in scope or not

  • Log access times of space. (Do we need this? Do we want this? Privacy vs. access management debate. Would require a modification on Ackess 2.0 as it currently does not output this information)

Not in scope

  • Manage system remotely from the internet
  • Open door remotely / without presenting a tag

Hardware

I've settled on using a Dell Wyse Cx0 C10LE thin client.

Using a Raspberry Pi was considered, but it is more powerful than required and costs us money, while this donated Wyse device is sitting in storage and could really use a purpose in life. :-)

Specs

  • CPU: Via C7 @ 1GHz
  • RAM: 256MB
  • Storage: 100MB (!)
  • Video: VX855/VX875 Chrome 9 HCM (Max resolution) 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz Colour:15/16/24/32bpp)
  • Power: 12V 2.5A, Coax 5.5mm/2.1mm
  • Power usage: Off: 1W, Idle: 5W, Running: 7W

Source: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/cx0/ (with a correction)

Operating system

Since we only have 100MB of storage to work with, the choises for an OS are limited. Yes I could have installed on an external USB flash drive, but where's the fun in that? :p

After some research and looking around, I've settled on using SliTaz Linux. An installation without a GUI takes up a footprint of merely 25MB, which accomodates our main hardware bottleneck on the Wyse hardware.

SliTaz homepage: https://www.slitaz.org/en/ SliTaz documentation: https://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:start SliTaz community documentation: https://slitaz-wiki.readthedocs.io/start.html

Installation and configuration

Exact steps for installation and configuration of the OS goes here

Software

  • Will be written in plain C. Python was considered but the storage overhead of the Python packages was deemed too great.
  • Database will be a plain CSV file
  • Will have a menu driven UI using ncurses