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Year of the Monkey: Guan Yu and Me

spannerspencer

Year of the MonkeyCelebrate Chinese New Year with element14!

 

Day Five: Guan Yu and Me

 

Nimen hao! Perhaps you remember our Christmas advent calendar shenanigans, when members of the element14 team all gave away their deepest, darkest secrets, and we asked you to guess which skeletons belonged in which closet?

 

Well, one of my fun facts was a long-time love of kung fu, and I mention it now in the midst of our Chinese New Year celebrations as today's patron is someone I'm very familiar with from those kung fu classes. He's the Chinese God of War, and a very popular figure when the New Year rolls around.

 

But first, it's the Year of the Monkey, so in order to win our time-limited badge, all you need to do is stop by to read and comment on each of our New Year blogs. The badge will only be available to earn until February 23, after which you'll have to wait 12 years before it comes up again (given the cycle of the Chinese zodiac).

 

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

We won't get into a debate about the existence of gods here, but a unique aspect of the Chinese God of War, Guan Yu (or Guan Gung, as he's also known) is that he really did exist. His epic exploits saw him become the subject of one of China's greatest works of literature of all time (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), and his subsequent ascension into being a recognised deity.image

 

When you position your Guan Yu statue in your house (and every respectable house has such a statue, of course) he's positioned to face the door. This prevent bad luck, demons and those of ill intention from being able to enter your dominion.

 

So in honour of Guan Yu in the New Year, we want to hear your thoughts on new or existing security-focused projects. Digital security, physical security, personal security -- any clever ways to make the world a safer place through the magic of electronics!

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  • At Leeds Hackspace one of the members created our entire entry system using Arduino's and electronic locks with an RFID system.

     

    So you get an RFID card and pin number, which is used for the outer door access (the Hackspace shares a building) this then unlocks the electronic lock after checking with a server for authorisation, this then notifies the website to let everyone know the Hackspace is open.

     

    Because it's marked as open, this allows easier entry to the inner Hackspace door with just the card and allows access through the upper electronic lock and turns a light on to show "we're open!".

     

    On leaving the building people can swipe the RFID card on the door and this is then logged on the server again and also turns off the music equipment in the Hackspace (there's a networked HiFi). It could also be setup to engage other systems in the space to ensure safe shutdown/etc.

     

    The door openings are also tracked and notify chat channels when the door's opened while the Hackspace is closed, just as an informative measure.

     

    Just one example of security and electronics. It works pretty well!

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  • At Leeds Hackspace one of the members created our entire entry system using Arduino's and electronic locks with an RFID system.

     

    So you get an RFID card and pin number, which is used for the outer door access (the Hackspace shares a building) this then unlocks the electronic lock after checking with a server for authorisation, this then notifies the website to let everyone know the Hackspace is open.

     

    Because it's marked as open, this allows easier entry to the inner Hackspace door with just the card and allows access through the upper electronic lock and turns a light on to show "we're open!".

     

    On leaving the building people can swipe the RFID card on the door and this is then logged on the server again and also turns off the music equipment in the Hackspace (there's a networked HiFi). It could also be setup to engage other systems in the space to ensure safe shutdown/etc.

     

    The door openings are also tracked and notify chat channels when the door's opened while the Hackspace is closed, just as an informative measure.

     

    Just one example of security and electronics. It works pretty well!

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