Background

My oldest son Lukas is now 10 years old, and sometime soon he will start going home from school alone. If I give him a key to the house he will probably loose it one day, and I hate the idea of having keys for our house "in the wild". I could of course have the cylinders rekeyed at the locksmith but with nine cylinders that will probably cost more than $100 - every time a keys goes missing.

So a few months ago (spring 2013) I started thinking about implementing an electronic access control system for our house. Not seriously, but still thinking.

Then a few weeks later we were at my wife's family, and I drove home to fetch some forgotten items. Arriving at our house after 45 minutes of driving I found out that I had forgotten my keys. Argh! The next 3x45 minutes were spent driving back and forth while thinking about how the electronic access control system would have helped: I could have called my wife, and she could have remote-unlocked the house via the internet. When I parked the car I had myself convinced: I need an electronic access control system.

Buying a complete system would be boring, restrictive and expensive so I decided to build my own system Do-It-Yourself style. Since then I have been researching electronic locks, motor locks (great but REALLY expensive), keypads, RFID readers, Arduinos and Raspberry Pi's. Finally I decided to document my journey here, so others might benefit from my work - and perhaps correct me if I do something stupid ;-)

About me:
My name is Søren Thing. I live in Aalborg, Denmark with my family. Graduated from Aalborg University in 2001 as M.Sc. Electronic Engineering. Have been programming primarily PHP since.