Goals and Road Map

Project Goals and Roadmap

The goal of this project is to provide excellent Access Control and Security solutions based on open-source hardware and software.

Evolution of the Project

This project came about when we wanted to add electronic access controls and monitoring to our Hacker Space in Fullerton, CA.

When shopping for security products, the commercial solutions we found fell into one of the following categories:

• Name-brand solutions from U.S.A. or Europe that were good but really expensive and proprietary
• Questionable offshore solutions that were cheap but had no support and were also proprietary
• A few one-off custom designs people had made for themselves.

All of the commercial solutions had one thing in common: they were closed-source and we could not access the code in any way for customization or support of new devices.

Some of the custom designs we found looked promising, but were often based on a piece of difficult-to-source hardware that the creators had special access to.

Commodity Hardware and Software Focus

The pieces that we found readily available as commodity items from many sources included:

• Electric Door hardware
• Power supplies and enclosures
• Alarm Sensors
• IP video cameras (ONVIF Standard)
• Small-format PCs
• Open-source software for many common tasks
  • Serial monitoring and logging
  • Secure e-mail and SMS alerting
  • Video processing (OpenCV)
  • Basic video archiving (Zone Minder)
  • Home Automation (Linux MCE)
  • Storage management and archiving
  • Encryption
  • Basic embedded systems development

Our goal became to develop a fully open-source security solution made from commodity parts and open-source designs. This would enable anyone to write in support for new hardware, customize the work-flow for their systems, and leverage the pool of existing open-source software for monitoring, processing, alerting, database storage and other tasks.

File:V3 reference arch.png
Reference architecture with v3.x components

Initial Project Goals

The initial Open Access Control project had the following goals in mind:

• Control 2 doors with electric hardware and Form C relays
• Support 2 Wiegand-format reader inputs
• Support 2 additional Form C relays for chimes, sirens, etc.
• Have 4 supervised alarm zones
• Support a real-time clock (RTC) with battery backup
• Run independently of a PC, with internal database
• Support attachment to a Linux PC for monitoring and alerting, remote access

We achieved this goal with the current design. Assembled boards, kits and readers are available in the ACCX Products Store.

Current Development Effort

Following the success of the original Open Access Control, many people have asked us to continue development of the project.

As a result, we formed ACCX Products as a way to provide open-source designs for the system, and pay for the project with by selling consulting, commercially-produced boards, starter kits and other items.

Latest Project

The current project is a ground-up revision of the Open Access Control. This has been tentatively called "Open Access v3.0" Check out the Open Access 3.0 Project Page for details.

Project Roadmap

• Develop a set of physical, electrical and logical interface standards to allow anyone working on open-source hardware and software for security applications to be compatible.
• Develop a framework for end-to-end encryption of security transactions using AES and other industry-standard algorithms
• Develop new bi-directional protocol fors Mifare, Near Field Communication, and other devices that support challenge-response.
• Produce a set of development kits to facilitate development by others. This may include:
  • Wiegand break-out boards
  • RS-485 shields for Arduino
  • Low-cost single-door boards
  • Full featured Ethernet-capable boards
  • CAN BUS boards
• Standardize an SDK for others to create exciting new devices and software for home automation, security and access control