Building Visitor Management System - Waylay IO

Description

Smart buildings are increasingly common these days having features like automatic lighting, ventilation, and security being linked in what’s called a Building Management System that is actively taking care of the environment based on predefined sets of rules.

An important part of this is the security layer that allows easy access for people who work there based on identity confirmation. Usually, these systems are IoT-enabled for easy monitoring and statistics about user traffic and unauthorized entry attempts.

Let's build a system that allows user access based on RFID cards or fingerprints and sends the data to an IoT platform for logging.

The main purpose of this tutorial is to get you started on IoT development using the Waylay IO low-code platform.

If you need help in deploying this solution or building something similar please contact Waylay.io for the low-code IoT Solution or Zalmotek.com for IoT-enabled hardware prototypes.

Let’s get started!

Components

Build Instructions

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1

Hardware requirements

For this tutorial, we have decided to use the M5Stack Ecosystem because it enables building such a system without prototyping specific tools, such as a soldering iron or prototyping cables. The brain of this project is the M5Core2, an IoT development kit based on the ESP32 microcontroller. This ecosystem allows you to connect the provided modules through a GROVE port to the M5Core2, allowing fast deployment of hardware.

The modules we’ve picked for this tutorial are M5Stack’s Finger Print Sensor Unit based on the FPC1020A capacitive fingerprint recognition chipset and the Mini RFID Reader/Writer Unit based on the MFRC522 chip.
2
Wire Connections
- Connect the Mini RFID Reader/Writer Unit to PORT A of the M5Core2 (the red port near the USB-C connector) using the Grove cable. This unit uses the I2C protocol to send data to the M5Core2.
- Take out the CORE2 plate on the back to expose the pins.
- The Finger Print Sensor Unit communicates with the M5Core2 through the UART protocol, so we'll connect it using the Grove cable, the Grove to 4 Pin connector and the male to male Dupont wires to the following pins:
```
BLACK  - GND
RED    - 5V
YELLOW - TXD2
WHITE  - RXD2
```
3
Prerequisites
- Install M5Burner according to your OS.
- Install Thonny following the steps on the official website.