[ILUG] Swipe Card System

[Tony Groves]

I'm looking into setting up a swipe-card system for a remote rural
building so that only authorised cardholders are admitted.

What I reckon I might need are:

For the site:
(1) an externally-rated vandalproof card-reader, presumably with an
RS-232 connector.
(2) an old PC, loaded with Debian Linux (my preferred solution for
everything).

For issuing cards (at home):
(1) a card writer.
(2) a supply of pre-printed plastic cards, starting with 250, and about
50 per year after that.

I can (presumably) write scripts for the site PC to look after database
lookup and usage logging, and can visit the site occasionally to update
the database and download logs. There is no internet connection there,
and we don't want one. Security and reliability are important but not
critical; this system is more for convenience than anything else.

So, does anybody here have any experience of such systems? What sort of
hardware and suppliers should I be looking for? Are there any pitfalls
that I need to look out for? Should I be producing the cards myself or
is there some external agency which will do a better job (with embossing
or whatever) at a reasonable cost?

Thanks very much for any suggestions.

Tony.