Daily Cup of Tech

OK, people. Hang on to your beanies because we’re turning the geek meter up to 11! This week’s Make It Monday project is a bit more than just copying some code and running it on your computer. This week, we need to pull out the soldering iron and physically build some circuitry but, man, would it be worth it.

Ever since I heard about RFID tags, I thought that there could be a million uses for this technology in my home alone! Lights could come on or off as I entered the room. My front door would be permanently locked except when I was in the vicinity. The TV would switch to my favorite shows when I entered the room. I would walk up to my computer and it would automatically log me on. I could tell where my kids (or keys, or iPod, etc.) were at any time. My kitchen would automatically create a shopping list based on what’s not in inventory. (Excuse me as I wipe the drool from my keyboard.)

The guys over at DDP have come up with RFID Enabling Your Front Door (with a Parallax BASIC Stamp & 13.5 MHz APSX RW-210. As I stated earlier, this is not for those who do not have some serious soldering fu! You need to get right into the different components and wire them together yourself. But, once you have that all completed, nick84 has all of the programming for the microcontroller all ready to download.

When you are done, you will have the basics that will recognize any RFID tag this it is programmed for. Now, to figure out how to wire this into my home network!

For those of you interested in seeing this project in action, check out this little demo video:

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