KiCAD schematic symbols

Tonight I worked on the I/O-portion of the RPi HAT add-on board.
KiCAD didn't have schematic symbols for the 74HC244 Octal buffer/line driver and the MAX3483E RS-485 transceiver I want to use, so I spent the evening creating the two symbols in a library file.
The library is available at https://github.com/Sthing/AccessThing/tree/master/KiCAD/Libraries.

Two steps back, on step forward

It has been more than a year since I wrote about my efforts to create a print for the keypad. Since then I have mostly gone backwards...

I found out that soldering a 0.4mm Quad Flat No-leads package requires good eyes. I did the soldering wrong at first, and probably toasted the chip when testing it - at least it did not work after resoldering it under a microscope. I *knew* that I had two extra chips somewhere - but could not find them.

Thus I decided to go with a ready-made breakout board instead. Etched a new circuit board - and discovered that placing the electrodes behind a 6mm fibre cement board did not work even though I had tested it before doing the first printed circuit board.

New strategy: Create 12 "buttons" from a aluminum rod on a lathe. Use a long time figuring out how to solder leads to the aluminum. Drill holes in fiber board and mount buttons. Decide it looks ugly and scratch the concept.

Finally I gave up and bought a water proof stainless steel matrix keypad from Alibaba.com. It cost me 30 USD for the keypad, 30 USD shipping, and ~15USD in VAT, a total of 75 USD. It is more than I like, but it works! ;-) So now I am back to using a PCF8574 8-bit I/O expander for the keypad.

I have spent so little time on the project lately, that it is hard to remember how far I have come. So tonight I will start a To-do list. Hopefully that will make it a little easier to spend an hour or two on actually working - and not just remembering how far I got the last time.

Print for touch keypad

At some time I decided to use the Freescale's MPR121 Proximity Capacitive Touch Sensor Controller for the keypad at the entrance.
The chip has 0.4mm pin spacing so I decided not to try isolation milling and because of the print size (about 3x4 inches) it would not be cheap to order a finished print. I could use a breakout board - readily available at eBay for a few dollars - but I got stubborn and decided to etch my own print.
I ordered photo sensitive PCB from Reichelt and found out that I had to illuminate the board for about 25 minutes with the lamp I used. I got stubborn again and started building a UV-LED based PCB lamp. It took to long - and I am not quite done - but today I produced the print I needed. Now I only need to illuminate the board for 40 seconds ;-)

Large pads because it will be placed behind a 6mm board.

Traces from the pads back to the MPR121 chip on the reverse.

Close up of the area where the chip is to be mounted.

Next week I hope to solder the chip and test the board.

The bigger picture

Tonight I will try to list the hardware components I plan to include in the system, and try to figure out how to connect them all.

• Input/output devices outside the door, controlled by an Arduino-like microcontroller:
• Card reader for ISO 14443A cards (like MIFARE and NFC).
  MFRC522 chip, SPI interface.
• Card reader for EM4100 125kHz RFID cards.
  Serial 9600/8/N/1 interface, 3 pins: Serial data, Data ready pulse, RESET.
• Some sort of keypad.
  Until recently I planned to use a cheap ($2) 4x3 key membrane switch matrix keypad. It is very easy to use with the Arduino Keypad library - but this eats 7 I/O-pins. However the library now supports the use of I²C port expanders (like PCF8574 or MCP23017) which lowers the number of required pins to 2: SDA and SCL - and they can be reused for other I²C devices.
  Two weeks ago I discovered the Freescale MPR121 Proximity Capacitive Touch Sensor Controller. It is a small (3mm x 3mm) chip that allows up to 12 electrodes to be used as touch inputs. The interface is I²C. I requested a free sample (3 pcs) from their website and 5 days later FedEx arrived with an envelope from Malaysia. Thank you, Freescale! So now I have to try and see if capacitive touch can provide a better interface than the membrane switch keypad.
• Nokia 5110 84x48 pixel display.
  Philips PCD8544 controller, SPI interface.
• Sensors and actuators in the door and door frame, controlled by a Raspberry Pi:
• Ruko/Abloy EL582 solenoid lock.
  1 output to control the solenoid (through a MOSFET).
  2 inputs for position of bolt and handle.
• A reed contact and a recessed magnet mounted in door and frame to detect if the door is really closed.
  1 input.
• A microswitch in back of the strike plate to detect if the dead bolt is in place.
  1 input.
• Power supply - supplied by 230VAC mains.
• A 12V 7.2Ah lead acid battery so the access control system can keep running during power failures.
• A battery charger (230VAC => 12VDC).
• 12V => 5V and/or 3.3V regulators for the electronics.
• Perhaps use an analog input to monitor the voltage of the 12V battery.
• Wild ideas:
• A PIR-sensor to detect unathorized entry.
• Monitor my Kibbi-sensors for open windows.
• A 12V sirene - if unauthorized entry is detected.
  1 output (through a MOSFET).
• A laser-grid in front of the door - to signal "armed" status ;-)

And now it is late, and the connections must wait for another time. SPI, I²C, serial, RS485 - who knows.

Reboot! Join a hacker space.

How time flies!

It has been a year since my last post. The project has been at a complete standstill while other things happened in my life - like repapering the kids' rooms and restoring the front of a rotting caravan.

All the while I have longed to continue the project but continually failed to actually *do* something. Eventually I decided to join our local hacker space Hal9k. I get around-the-clock access to the facilities, and - more importantly - club night every Thursday. Tonight is the third time I attend - and I love it. The other members are doing all kind of great (and weird) things, and are ready to tell about their projects. I have added a repeating weekly appointment to my calendar, so from now on Thursday night is dedicated to the AccessThing project. Great!

So far I have spent the time remembering where I left the project a year ago, assembling my HDMIPi screen, and finally tonight made an LED blink when connected to the GPIOs of the Raspberry Pi. I really like that the pins can be manipulated by writing to device files under /sys/class/gpio/.

My HDMIPi connected to a breadboard - and my first LED connected to GPIO25.

Two weeks ago I also decided to order another kind of MOSFET. The IRL540N I had bought last summer needs a higher gate-source voltage than 3.3V (from the GPIOs of the Raspberry Pi). So I ordered a roll of 50 low voltage IRL2502 MOSFETs from eBay. When they arrived today I had to pull out my magnifier - they are kind of tiny: 2.9mm x 2.3mm including the legs! Max ratings are 20V Drain-Source and 4.2A (at a higher Gate-Source voltage), so they should easily handle the 12V/220mA I need to drive the Ruko/Abloy EL582 solenoid lock. But it might take a little practice to solder them.

IRL540N and IRL2502.

Pull request sent

Today I finally finished my rewrite of the MFRC522 library and sent a pull request to the upstream repository: https://github.com/miguelbalboa/rfid/pull/9. Now I look forward to hear Miguel's response - will he welcome my changes or reject them as "too invasive"?
Since last time I also added functions to use the MIFARE Classic Decrement/Increment/Restore/Transfer commands and an example of how to use them (it requires changing the sector trailer).

The next step in the project is building the electronics for driving a Ruko/Abloy EL582 solenoid lock I have bought for use in this project. I expect that to be a lot simpler than rewriting the MFRC522 library ;-)

MFRC522 library cleanup

Almost 8 weeks ago I wrote: "I will translate the comments to English, clean up, and implement proper anticollision and support for 7 and 10 byte UIDs."

I have now finished the following subjects:

• Anticollision
• 4, 7 and 10 byte UIDs (ie cascade levels 1, 2 and 3)
• Cleanup
• Verbose comments in English
• Tested Authentication and reading from MIFARE Classic cards.

I still need a little work on:

• Testing writes to MIFARE Classic cards (should not be a problem).
• Support for reading and writing MIFARE Ultralight cards.
• Updated example scripts
• Updated keywords.txt 

So now I actually believe I will finish this job - and hopefully soon so I can get on to building some electronics for the electric lock.