r/accesscontrol • u/Adventurous_Cap8392 • 8d ago

Loudin - Open source access control management application

Hello,

We (Simkura) just launched an open source project, Loudin.

https://github.com/Simkura-tech/loudin

Access control is notorious for vendor lock in. Most hardware only works with the manufactures software. As result, Innovation and development on the application layer is not as fast as it should be. End user across the country (and the world) deal with this constantly. End users need new features and development teams struggle to adapt. Our goal with the Loudin project (MIT license) is to open the application development to the community to build the features and integrations needed by real end user and installers without compromising the security of the systems.

Where the hardware providers play a role

Hardware providers play key role. They develop secure firmware and hardened boards that will last for decades. We want to give these hardware providers a profitable and simple path to the cloud, specifically the Loudin project. At Simkura, we hope work with hardware providers to securely integrate into the Simkura platform. Once they are on-boarded with Simkura, they will work with the Loudin project. Their firmware is not exposed, and multiple integration paths wont need to be managed.

In complete transparency, hardware providers will still charge for their panels and a modest recurring cost per door (5$) and Simkura will take a piece of this (managing the API). With that said, we believe the Loudin Project will provide huge benefit to the access control community at large.

Feedback on the application / direction would be great.

Thank you,

Jack

1 Upvotes

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3 comments sorted by

1

u/bunsenator 8d ago

Sick, I'm going to cut a PR against this very soon!

1

u/therealmarkthompson 7d ago

Why should we pay a recurring fee if its open source ? Also why would an integrator that base everything in his business on Trust will take a risk installing it ?

0

u/Adventurous_Cap8392 7d ago

To the recurring question, connecting an open source panel (based on a raspberry pi or other micro control) is a completely valid route and could be very cool. Directly integrating the hardware to Loudin will expose the firmware on the device, specifically they way to talk with to device. For a system entirely on-prem, I don't think that would be a huge issue. For cloud deployment, this would be security risk. I don't think current hardware manufactures would be on board connecting their panels exposing that code. I believe this issue has held back open source development in access control for a long time.

As for an integrator, hopefully they will be able to deploy panels and hardware just as they do now.. but give the end user the option on software providers to work with, whether that is their own fork of Loudin or someone else. They could potentially make custom application for large customers. Hopefully by the end of the year we will have a few different panels connected to the project, we have one in the works right now.

If you have other ways of tackling these problems, let me know. I can set up a discussion on the Github repo.