Integration of RFID reader for Open Car Sharing

[pingu_98]

Hi everyone,

Firstly - Freematics team, great product!

Now I've bought it and plan to use it for something you perhaps never indented - open source car sharing.

The idea is hopefully simple. We'll mount an RFID reader in the car, connect it to the Freematics One and use it to unlock the doors when the right card is presented (the card being validated beforehand via GPRS/text message).

It seems feasible to hook up a UART RFID reader to the Atmel 328 via software serial, it might mean disabling the bluetooth and/or a few other items. What do you think?

Otherwise, my back-up plan is to read the MAC address of the bluetooth module in a phone and use that as the 'key' to unlock the car, instead of an RFID card (much simpler technologically, but not quite as easy to use for the human).

I know that not all cars support door locking/unlocking via OBDII - this is something on the list to be worked on.

Here's a video of my initial testing of the RFID module:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlYf1wRLxyo

All feedback welcome

Regards,
James

[protomor]

Won't the freematics unit have to be powered all the time in order for this to work? I've killed cars leaving OBD2 stuff plugged in that were low power consumption. Dunno about the freematics unit.

[pingu_98]

Yes, power drain is something I have on my list to worry about - it should be possible to put some of the components into low power mode, but fundamentally the reader (power supply) and RFID element would need continuous power to be effective.

[stanley]

After entering standby mode, drawing current is about 10mA.