Hackspace Instrumentation

Our always-on little server will be used to collect data from the HackSpace and provide a number of interfaces for the presentation of that data. This will be for "the things we want to know about" and various interesting statistics.

• door contacts
  • We'll want to do the main HackSpace door first
  • I got a nice reed-magnet contact switch from expolinkalarms.co.uk on ebay for £1.65
  • I taped it next to the door to install next weds Michael Erskine 13:21, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
  • I brought in some Tyco 6-core alarm cable - there's lots of this in my free-issue cable store at work.
• temperature
• light level
• PIR
• dance-mat floor pressure switch (!)
  • I have one in the store room
  • it might be useful to use it on the floor just inside the store room
• RFID reader fun
• fingerprint readers! I have left two in the store room
• webcams - naturally!

PC I/O

• serial and parallel ports available
• USB ports available
• we could arduino it if we want

PC storage and user interfaces

• RRD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRDtool
• syslog?
• IRC bot would be entirely appropriate
• web interface of course!
• hook into the website
• daily summary as RSS feed
• everybody loves graphs!

Michael Erskine 13:21, 10 February 2011 (GMT)

Crazy Cool Mobile Phone Hack

Inspired by some crazy phone hacks on Instructables, I'd like to involve some old mobile phones to act as inputs/outputs. I've started a page on my vebug.com webpage and I'll transcribe it here.

Michael Erskine 09:33, 15 February 2011 (GMT)