ekey Binding

Introduction

ekey is an Austrian company that provides biometric access-control solutions, more precisely fingerprint readers and corresponding controllers. This binding extends the functionality of the products ekey home and ekey multi.

To use this binding one need to have either the home or the multi solution of ekey. Note that the multi version provides much more functionality than the home version.

Additionally the ekey UDP converter is needed. This module provides an interface by converting the internal RS485 signals to Ethernet. Connecting this to the local network enables ekey to communicate to the ekey binding.

Prospects

The ekey binding translates information that comes from the ekey controller and makes it usable to openHAB. Usually ekey sends packets with information on each user input. This might be every time a person pulls its finger over the terminal or if a digital input occurs.

The information consists at least of these types:

userID - the index of the detected user that is stored on the controller

fingerID - the finger that the person used

terminalID - the serial number of the fingerprint reader that was used

action - this tells whether the user was recognized successfully and access was granted or access was denied

The amount of information depends on whether ekey home or ekey multi is used and which protocol is used by the converter. But the previously mentioned 4 are supported in any case.

The converter knows up to three different protocols. The RARE protocol that is enabled by default, the HOME protocol which is very similar to the RARE and finally the MULTI protocol which is fairly powerful compared to the other ones. The binding uses the term "mode" instead of "protocol".

The type of protocol that is used by the converter can be changed with a small tool (unfortunately Windows only). This tool is called ConfigConverterUDP and can be downloaded from the ekey website.

Available Types of Information

Action This indicates whether access was granted (Value: 0) or denied (Value: -1). According to the ekey documentation there are six more values possible as you can see in the .map file below. (Item Type Number, Modes: R/H/M)

Finger ID This indicates the finger that was used by a person. The value consists of 2 digits. The first one specifies the hand (left hand: 1, right hand: 2) and the second digit specifies the finger from left to right. To get a feeling see the .map file below. (Item Type Number, Modes: R/H/M)

Input ID This indicates which of the four digital inputs was triggered. Value is number of Input. "-1" tells that no input was triggered. (Item Type Number, Modes: M)

Key ID This indicates which of the four keys was used. See ekey documentation on "keys". (Item Type Number, Modes: M)

Mode This simply returns the mode that was used 1=RARE, 2=MULTI, 3=HOME (Item Type Number, Modes: R/H/M)

Relay ID This indicates which relay has been switched. (Item Type Number, Modes: R/H)

Terminal ID This provides the serial number of the packet source. The source can be a fingerprint terminal or the controller (in case of digital inputs). The Serial number has a length of 13. When using RARE mode, only the tailing 8 digits can be returned.(Item Type Number, Modes: R/H/M)

Terminal name This returns the 4 characters long name that was specified on the controller for the specific terminals. (Item Type String, Modes: M)

User ID This indicates which user has been detected on the terminal. The value is the numerical order of the user as it was specified on the controller. Mapping the numbers to names make sense. (Item Type Number, Modes: R/H/M)

Username This returns the ten characters long name of the person that has been recognized on the terminal. The name that is returned must have been specified on the controller before. (Item Type String, Modes: M)

User status This indicates the status of the user: -1 = undefined, 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled (Item Number, Modes: M)

As you can see, in many cases it makes sense to map the number values to some more meaningful strings. See the mapping examples on the bottom.

Binding Configuration in openhab.cfg

The binding configuration should look like this:

# ip address of the eKey udp converter (optional)
ekey:ip=10.0.0.133

# port number for the UDP packets
ekey:port=51000

# mode can be RARE, MULTI or HOME depending on what your system supports - RARE is default
ekey:mode=HOME

# the delimiter is also defined on the eKey udp converter - use the eKey configuration
# software to determine which delimiter is used or to change it.
# Not defining this is the same as " "
ekey:delimiter=_

Binding Items to ekey

This is quite simple. It depends on the type of information someone is interested in.

The syntax is ekey="interestname" Where interestname is one of the following:

ACTION|USERNAME|USERID|USERSTATUS|TERMINALID|TERMINALNAME|FINGERID|KEYID|INPUTID|MODE|RELAY

Simple example:

Number UserID           "Last user that accessed the house was [MAP(ekey_names.map):%d]"     {ekey="userid"}

Examples

Rules

Here is an example that demonstrates a simple rule that feeds the openHAB TTS-engine and welcomes the user when he or she enters the house.

rule Welcome
when
        Item Action received update       
then
        if(Action.state==-1)
                say("unauthorized access!")
                else{
                        var String name = transform("MAP","ekey_names.map",UserID.state.toString())
                        var String finger = transform("MAP","ekey_finger.map",FingerID.state.toString())
                        var String terminal =   transform("MAP","ekey_terminal.map",TerminalID.state.toString())                     
                        var String text = name + " put his " + finger + " finger over the " + terminal + " terminal. Hello "+name
                        say(text)  
                    }
end

Mapping the received Numbers to Strings

Mapping finger IDs to names:

ekey_finger.map:
11=leftlittle
12=leftring
13=leftmiddle
14=leftindex
15=leftthumb
21=rightthumb
22=rightindex
23=rightmiddle
24=rightring
25=rightlittle
30=unspecified

Mapping names:

ekey_names.map:
-1=Unspecified
1=John Doe
2=Jane Doe

Mapping terminal names:

ekey_terminal.map:
80156839130911=frontdoor
80156839130914=backdoor

Mapping actions:

ekey_action.map:
0=granted
-1=rejected
1=timeoutA
2=timeoutB
3=inactive
4=alwaysuser
5=notcoupled
6=digitalinput

You may find some more configuration examples here.