This is the entire codebase of a hardware-focused project made as a part of the 2023 Arduino Hackathon hosted by UQ Mars, RoboGals & QUT Robotics Club. The theme of the hackathon was automation, with our project following that by attempting to automate logins with RFID technology.

The main purpose of this application is to act as a password and RFID card manager, with a front-end application where you're able to manage your RFID cards and a back-end that talks with an ESP32 via Rust to load binaries based on what you are doing on the front-end. The project was not presented at the event but we did end up completing it afterwards. We have draft mock-ups in the concept.excalidraw file on root.

Please refer to the User Guide for how to use this program.

This project was limited by scarce parts and limited ESP32 documentation, findings will be listed below.

Stack

• NextJS, our chosen ReactJS front-end framework.
• Tauri, a framework that allowed us to create a web-based application with our chosen front-end. Tauri combines the front-end and back-end to communicate with the ESP32 hardware back-end.
• ESP32 / Arduino hardware stack
• RFID scanner (RC522) component - currently limited to MiFare

Troubleshooting

Wrong Boot Mode on ESP32

This error requires the user to hold down the boot button. The fix is to install a 10uF capacitor between EN and ground on your hardware configuration.

This seems to only have been encountered on my laptop regardless of if its running windows, or manjaro linux. This was tested with an esp32-wroom and an esp32s2 mini.

This seems to be a common issue relating to inconsistency in some ESP modules where the RC delay on the EN signal is not sufficient which breaks the timing.

Related Articles

• Reddit thread
• GitHub issue

Limitations

ESP32 USB Output

• The base model of the ESP32 does not have an in-built USB controller but the ESP32-S2/S3, in the project's current state it only supports keyboard output via Bluetooth. This means that you will have to connect the ESP32 to your computer via Bluetooth before you can use the program.

Password Encryption

• Currently passwords are not encrypted and are instead stored on the partition in a way that if someone was reading off your ESP32's partition they would be able to obtain the passwords that you synced to the device.

Development

Process for Building ESP32 Binaries

1. Run git pull --recurse-submodules to pull the esp-idf repository
2. (Optional) Run pyi-makespec .esp-idf/components/partition_table/parttool.py and replace the name of the python file
   • Create a merged file that merges all the commands into collect like seen in merged.spec, see https://www.zacoding.com/en/post/pyinstaller-create-multiple-executables/ or https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/spec-files.html#multipackage-bundles
3. Run bash pyinstaller --distpath ./dist single_merged.spec
4. Download the esptool binary for your OS from the GitHub repo under releases and drag it into the src-tauri\bin\dist folder
5. Rename folder to match the OS tag

• The executables need to be in the same folder otherwise you end up with error

   [55752] Archive not found: D:\keyDOTboard\src-tauri\bin\merged_dist\parttool-x86_64-pc-windows-msv
  

ESP binary configuration

• Have to use pin 17(TX), 18(RX) for debug printing wehn using a HID device
• assign these through uart1 in esp config, https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32s2/get-started/linux-macos-setup.html#console-output-configuration
• manually change these pins in the menuconfig

References

• Inspiration
• Icons from SVG REPO