[ale] OT - open source access control (physical) software?

[Mike Harrison]

On Mon, 2 May 2011, Sid Lane wrote:
> anyone know anything about these kinds of systems & particularly if there's
> any gpl(-ish) alternatives?  ideally I'd like a small-form (mac mini-ish) pc

I've hacked a few of these. Usually the control board
responds to some limited form of AT-like commands.

http://eeci.com/ar-16p.htm

Is one I've used a few times.

And specifically:

http://eeci.com/eeci2.htm#ar-soft

is a really BASIC example of how to control these and often similar 
devices.

The last one I did controlled a gun range,
using a relay to control the door, and others to turn on range
lane lights and the 'rabbit'.

It is easy stuff to do in Perl and MysQL. Perl can handle basic serial 
port stuff fairly easily.