Jason Antman’s Blog

At the Midland Park Ambulance Corps, where I’ve been volunteering my time as an EMT and all-around tech guru for three years, we have an IEI HubMax2 access control system. Maybe overkill for us (only 78 users in it, including old codes), it’s pretty simple – a box with some microcontrollers sits in a wiring closet, and is hooked up to keypads at each door, and relays to electromechanical strikes. Type in the right code, and the door opens. Obviously, it also logs all entries as well as unknown codes (but doesn’t log the actual code if unknown, so instead of removing old users, I set their codes to an invalid timezone so the doors don’t open, but accountability is still intact). Well, the old box died – fried by a surge from a blown computer that was hooked up to its’ serial port. New one was installed this weekend – an 8 hour ordeal.

The problem with the system is that to program it, I have to grab the laptop out of one of the ambulances, have IEI’s proprietary Windows-based programming software (which programs it via sending and receiving full binary memory maps of the controllers over 1200 baud serial), and spend half an hour in the utility closet (next to the furnace) where the box is waiting for memory maps to transfer over the slow direct connection. Well, there’s a proliant server running OpenSuSE seven feet away… why not use that?

While IEI offers their eMerge systems – appliance servers that manage their access control units via a web interface – for $6000, which run RedHat, they won’t even respond to my emails inquiring whether they have Linux-based programming software for their HubMax line. We don’t get that many new members per year, so I figured just programming in a few spare codes will handle it. Removing people can wait, as people usually leave on good terms. However, every once in a while something’s amiss at the building (usually a door left ajar, or food left out), and I’m called upon to pull the logs. It’s a pain in the @$$. I have to hunker down in that utility closet with a laptop, waiting for the whole memory map to download over 1200 baud just to see who came and went. Porting the software to Linux wouldn’t be a quick project. This is even worse during the school year when I’m living in my apartment an hour away, taking classes full time, and still working 25 hours a week.

The Solution: At the end of my eight-hour install, everything was programmed and setup, but the logs were still bothering me. Then I hit on an idea. Remembering how archaic the real-world interfacing of these things seemed to me (how can you use binary memory maps? What about a serial terminal with an ASCII command set, or even Ethernet and SNMP or Telnet? I really want to build one of these things running real-time Linux…), I started to flip through the manual and, sure enough, found a command (entered on a 12-key keypad on the main board) to dump logs in realtime to a serial line printer.

I ran a cable to the Linux-based server not 10 feet away, fired up Kermit, issued the Enable Log Print code, and tried a code entry on the keypad by the front door. Bingo!

In the two days since, I have a little daemon coded in PHP (yes, PHP) that reads the serial line and dumps all log data (entries, exits, door ajar, unknown code, access denied) to both a text file (for debugging and redundancy) and into a MySQL database. Another hour of coding and I have a simple web GUI, available on any of the computers on the LAN, for officers to check who’s come, and who tried to get in but couldn’t.

I’ve never written a daemon before, so I still have a bit more research to do – mainly in terms of error handling and how to keep it constantly running. However, I have a first version working.

In the next few days I’ll start posting better code for ieilogd. I have some in CVS now, but it’s kludgey (well, it was written through PuTTY on a Windows laptop in a utility closet at 3 AM). It also has quite a bit of user-handling code that’s specific to the roster format of my package PHP EMS Tools.

Projects, Tech HowTos access control, door lock, hubmax, iei, ieib