RFID Control for Your Home Automation: ESPEasy and Domoticz

This shows how I was able to add an RFID input to my Domoticz home automation. I am using this to turn ON and OFF a motion alarm switch on Domoticz. I have set it to read 2 different RFID cards. I have an event in Domoticz so that when the alarm is set and the motion is activated, the Raspberry will play an audio file and send me an email. This is a very basic alarm but you could use a door or window sensor. You can use it to open your front door or garage door.

Wiring

There are 2 small switches on the PN532. Set sw1 to ON and sw2 OFF. connect the VCC pin to 3v3, GND to GND, SDA to D2, and SCL to D1 of the nodeMCU.

ESPEasy is a user friendly firmware for the esp8266, no programming is required. To load the firmware to the nodeMCU follow the wiki. At the time of this writeup I used Release v2.0.0-dev12. Follow this tutorial to upload the firmware to your esp8266 using Windows. If you have a linux computer like I do, you will need Esptool to upload the firmware.

Download and unzip esptool fo Linux.

Open a linux terminal window:

cd Downloads/esptool-2.2/

Find out the port of the esp8266 when connected to the computer. this is usually /dev/ttyUSB0 To make things easy copy the firmware file to the esptool folder.

sudo python esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0/ write_flash 0x00000 ESPEasy_R147_4096.bin 

To erase the firmware from the NodeMCU:

sudo python esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0  erase_flash  

After flashing the firmware, reboot the esp8266 and follow the wiki to configure your device. I have included pictures of my application for reference.

The way this operates, is when a nfc tag is placed near the RFID reader, if the number is correct, the blue and red LEDs on the nodemcu turn ON. At the same time the alarm switch on Domoticz also turns ON. The next time the tag is placed near the reader, the red and blue LEDs will turn OFF, and also the switch on domoticz will turn OFF. The reverse is also possible. When the alarm switch on Domoticz is turned ON, the LEDs on the Nodemcu will also turn ON and vice versa. There is no need for HTTP commands to be sent to Domoticz.

If everything went correct you should have a working RFID reader to control your Domoticz home automation. All you need is an enclosure and a 5V power source.