Do You Have a Room You Want to Keep Really Secure?

I’m not going to pretend to know what you have that requires such advanced security, so I’ll just assume it’s to keep your room full of collectible action figures protected. With such a valuable collection, you’re going to want to lock it up tight with three-factor authentication. If you’re not familiar, multi-factor authentication is a security method where you’re required to use more than just the usual password.

If you follow this nice guide over on Switched On Network, those authentication methods are: an RFID pass, a 6-digit pin number, and a randomly generated code sent via text message. The RFID card system, which you’ve likely had in your own employer’s office building, is remarkably unsecure. But, that situation is improved a lot by also requiring that visitors input a personal pin number. Finally, the randomly-generated code sent in an SMS message means that the visitor will actually need to be present — along with their phone.

You can have all of that security pretty affordably with just a few components: a wireless Raspberry Pi, a USB RFID reader, a touchscreen LCD, and an electronic door strike. After getting the Raspberry Pi setup as you usually would, you then setup an Apache Server with a MySQL database that holds user info, which handles the first two authentication factors. Twilio is then used to send a message for the third factor, and once that’s done a relay unlocks the electronic strike.