[Rack] doorport - do you know how the door opener works?

[Jonathan Lassoff]

I'm a bit familiar with the situation with the hardware, and AFAIK Miloh
and Mike Kan have also worked on the hardware. I've been playing with
various ideas for software for opening the door lately and have a little C
daemon for x86/BIOS PCs as well as an Arduino sketch that implement a
simple UDP-based protocol to see if anyone has been ringing the door
recently and to buzz open the gate.

SuperQ is in the process of getting an Arduino that can be powered by
802.3af -over-Ethernet. My hope is that once this hardware is in-hand, we
can mount it by the door and run some Ethernet from the closet there to the
stair-top door to power it.

Thanks for hooking the door up to Minotaur! That's a much more stable
machine than the one in the touchpanel by the door. I'll see about getting
the daemon running on there to test with.
I wonder what's on the other side of the wire though (within the buzzer
panel or intercom/buzzer controller). I wonder if our hacked-in extension
of the wire causes impedance mismatches, high-current paths, or other
electrical nasties that might interfere with its proper operation.

Cheers,
jof

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 1:47 AM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:

> Who knows how the door opener script works?  The door opener circuitboard
> is now effectively plugged into Minotaur, the computer screwed to the wall
> over the "server room" door.  Make it work somehow.
>
> https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Doorport
>
> This page is here to store information about the parallel port / door
> opener thingy that allows noisebridgers to open the door from a computer.
>
> jake (spaz) made a 30 foot (approximately) cable which has a female
> centronics-36 socket (like on an old printer) on one end, and a female
> DB-25 socket on the other end. It is a cat5 wire which has eight
> conductors, and is passing through two ground wires (to pins 19 and 20 on
> the DB25) and three each of input and output pins. These include pins 6
> and 7 (bits 4 and 5 of the parallel data byte), and pin 16 (an output pin
> which is pin 31 on the centronics connector). The three input pins are 10,
> 12 and 13 (none of which are inverted in the implementation). Pins 6 and
> 10 are the only ones wired up right now on the little optoisolator board
> (along with ground on pin 20).
>
> This is plugged into a USB parallel port cable (made for using old
> printers) which is plugged into Minotaur, the computer screwed to the wall
> over the "server room" door.
>
> the other end is in the dirty shop and is plugged into the little
> circuitboard with optoisolators on it, which is for opening the door. That
> board also has a male PS2 keyboard connector for 5v power, but that should
> be changed to connect to pin 7 of the DB25 port for power. The software
> will have to make sure to always turn pin 7 to logical 1, so that power is
> available to the little board for whatever that does.. probably a pull-up
> for a signal coming into the parallel port.
>
> If you know anything about that little board and what it does (or is
> supposed to do) please put that information here. Also please put the C
> program or whatever it is that talks to the parallel port and opens the
> door.
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