Electronic Lock Box

This is a Lock Box for Gonzaga's Next Gen Tech Bar (NGTB). NGTB employees can use a networked program to set who has authorized access to what partitions. If an authorized person swipes their ID card, the appropriate partition(s) will open. This will let NGTB employees leave items in the box for secure pickup at a later time

[This project's electronics and software are complete, but it is waiting on physical construction and a good latching mechanism]

The Story Behind the Project

This was my first project that integrated significant hardware control with software. The software was beautifully written with a very smooth client-server program to set box access. However, the hardware was an absolute mess (see picture above), and for primarily this reason, a physical box was never constructed for it. If I were to do this again (and maybe I will someday), I would use a shift register so only a few wires would need to go from the pi to the connection board, along with an i2c LCD instead of a parallel connection. Or perhaps I could get an ESP32 to do all the server-side stuff. My workplace still gets people asking to leave stuff often enough that this would be a useful project.

Features

• A properly set up client/server socket program means that multiple users on different computers can run the client program simultaniously, and make access edits to the server that are reflected on everyone's client programs in realtime

• An activity log keeps track of who swipes in when, and the computer name of anybody who modifies the authorized people list

• A password is required to connect to the server, but not if the client computer is the official NGTB computer

• An LCD screen shows the user what partition(s) they have access to when they swipe in.