ecsl@netbloc.com: 9408: Creating ECS interface to my Access Control System

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Creating ECS interface to my Access Control System
Kevin Trainor
Sat, 21 Oct 2000 17:17:35 -0500

Sat, 21 Oct 2000 17:17:35 -0500

I just bought an access control system for my house. It controls electric door strikes
based upon inputs from proximity card readers. I have been bench testing the system
before installing it and, so far, everthing has gone well.

What I want to do next is to interface this access control system with ECS. The access
control system is programmed and controlled via a serial port and terminal emulation
using my PC. The system has a character-based, menu-driven application that I access
by using HyperTerm to emulate a VT100 terminal. What I would like to do is to replace
the HyperTerm program with a connection to ECS via a serial port. Then, I would like
ECS to querry the access control system to get its status. Further, I want ECS to be
able to issue menu commands that cause the access control system to ulock doors, disable
readers, etc.

The big question: How do I do this with ECS? When I look at the ECS Client/Server
serial interface, it doesn't seem appropriate. The stream of ascii text that the access
control system puts out over its serial port is not structured for this kind of client/server
dialog. As an alternative, I have considered using the ECS serial port interface that
allows you to read and write to the serial port a charcter at a time. While this seems
promising, I think it would be a rather inelegant approach.

Are there any other ways to do this? Is it possible for me to define another device
type and write a driver for it? Or, can this only be done by Mark?

Thanks in advance to everyone for their comments and suggestions.

Kevin

I just bought an access control system for my house. It controls electric door strikes based upon inputs from proximity card readers. I have been bench testing the system before installing it and, so far, everthing has gone well.

What I want to do next is to interface this access control system with ECS. The access control system is programmed and controlled via a serial port and terminal emulation using my PC. The system has a character-based, menu-driven application that I access by using HyperTerm to emulate a VT100 terminal. What I would like to do is to replace the HyperTerm program with a connection to ECS via a serial port. Then, I would like ECS to querry the access control system to get its status. Further, I want ECS to be able to issue menu commands that cause the access control system to ulock doors, disable readers, etc.

The big question: How do I do this with ECS? When I look at the ECS Client/Server serial interface, it doesn't seem appropriate. The stream of ascii text that the access control system puts out over its serial port is not structured for this kind of client/server dialog. As an alternative, I have considered using the ECS serial port interface that allows you to read and write to the serial port a charcter at a time. While this seems promising, I think it would be a rather inelegant approach.

Are there any other ways to do this? Is it possible for me to define another device type and write a driver for it? Or, can this only be done by Mark?

Thanks in advance to everyone for their comments and suggestions.

Kevin