Many jobs give you a Proxcard ID Badge, and as my wife and I both carry one daily I wanted to integrate this into HomeAssistant. I picked up a Proxcard scanner on eBay (pictured below) and forked some code used to call a webhook upon a successful badge scan and made something new!
Meet the Proxcard-MQTT-Authentication project! Forked, spliced, and rebased from goliatone/rfid-poc, this program waits for a badge scan, compares it to a roster of approved badges, and sends an access granted/denied MQTT message to your broker. Obviously with MQTT/HASS the possibilities are endless. I have mine unlock my August lock (with the scanner placed behind the door’s side window.
You can pickup one of these scanners on eBay for $30-50 depending on the listing. Run it off a Pi, place it near your entryway, and you’re good to go. Depending on the material you’re scanning through this could work through a Window, thin door, or placed behind some sort of decoration.
Let me know what you think! Pull Requests are welcome!