Introducing OpenPrem
Over the past two months, I have been working on an access control system for residential use. What is an access control system? You're most likely to have used one at your work, where you might wave a badge in front of a proximity card reader to unlock a door.
Electronic access control systems are widely deployed in the commercial world, and they are almost ubiquitous in large enterprises. Access control systems have a number of nice properties. They're usually fast and easy to operate. With contactless proximity cards, you just wave the badge at the reader, turn the handle, and go. A variety of hardware options exist, and if spec'd nicely, can be attractive and unobtrusive. Remote access and monitoring usually comes "for free".
So why aren't these systems deployed more frequently in the residential space? First, they're complicated. The present job I'm on involves no less than three trades--an electrician, a commercial hardware company, and a painter. That's a lot of overhead if you just want to open your front door with your phone. These applications are certainly easier to do with new construction than they are to retrofit.
On this present job, the client has two high-usage doors connecting the home and a detached garage/guesthouse, plus a pedestrian gate into the yard in the same vicinity. Keys were deemed cumbersome (especially when unloading the car), and consumer-grade smart locks even more so. Thus I specified electrified mortise locks for the doors. A locksmith modified the existing Baldwin locksets used on other doors on the property so matching trim could be used throughout. The cost of the actual door hardware is not unreasonable, and there are tons of options at many price points. In my client's case, modifying the Baldwin hardware preserved aesthetics, plus enabled them to still manually throw the deadbolt at night.
The greater challenge turned out to be finding a controller to operate the access control. The controller system's primary responsibility is to receive data from the card reader or pin pad at the door, then activate the unlocking mechanism when a valid credential is presented. Most of these systems consist of control modules that either live near the doors or in a central panel. The control modules then connect back to a server that monitors and configures the panels. This sounds simple enough, but inevitably has become the most challenging aspect of the job.
The majority of off-the-shelf access control systems on the market are aimed at small to large enterprises, and are priced as such. Nearly every system I evaluated also required a Windows-based pserver. Thus, the high cost of software, plus the high cost of deploying a separate Windows server in addition to the standard Linux box I use on every job quickly became impractical. Integration was also limited. One particular feature proposed for one job was the ability of the access control panel to automatically disarm the security system when a valid card is scanned. To prevent false alarms, the door panel needs to wait for the security system to disarm before allowing the door to be opened. Another ask that was challenging for off-the-shelf systems: If the user scans into the exterior gate, the adjacent doors on the other side of the gate should also unlock so they do not have to scan in twice.
The frustrations with traditional access control systems are not uniquely mine. Several cloud-based startups have emerged trying to simplify the access control landscape. Community organizations such as Hackerspaces that have the technical know-how have developed their share of improvised solutions. Most small businesses stick with physical keys.
OpenPrem ("prem" as an abbreviation for "premises") is the working name for the new access control system being developed by Lucasec Technologies. Open? The server and communication protocol for the controller modules will be released open source in a later phase. Compatible hardware modules are also being developed.
The hardware modules are being designed to suit a "distributed" or "edge" architecture, where the control modules are placed relatively close to the door(s) to be controlled, and the modules are interconnected via standard Ethernet networking. They also support Power over Ethernet (PoE), so your entire access control infrastructure can be powered at the network closet, reducing the need for multiple backup power sources.
While OpenPrem is still in the early stages, expect to see more updates as it progresses.