Planet Arduino

[Shawn] recently overhauled his access control by fitting the doors with some RFID readers. Though the building already had electronic switches in place, unlocking the doors required mashing an aging keypad or pestering someone in an adjacent office to press a button to unlock them for you. [Shawn] tapped into that system by running some wires up into the attic and connecting them to one of two control boxes, each with an ATMega328 inside. Everything functions as you would expect: presenting the right RFID card to the wall-mounted reader sends a signal to the microcontroller, which clicks an accompanying relay that drives the locks.

You may recall [Shawn's] RFID phone tag hack from last month; the addition of the readers is the second act of the project. If you’re looking to recreate this build, you shouldn’t have any trouble sourcing the same Parallax readers or building out your own Arduino on a stick, either. Check out a quick walkthrough video after the jump.

Audigi @ instructables.com show us how to use an Arduino board to burn Arduino bootloader to mcus on a breadboard. He writes:

Connect Arduino Uno board to your computer. Start Arduino program and from examples choose “ArduinoISP” sketch and upload it to “Arduino Uno” board. Please make sure you select the correct board name and serial port. Now this board is ready to program new Atmega-328 chips on the breadboard as shown in the next step.

Burn Arduino Bootloader on Atmega-328 TQFP and DIP chips on Breadboard - [Link]