My friend Tim McNerney is working on a cool Bike-Sharing Program and NYU that he had proposed. So far, we've gotten three pcomp things (1. magnetic card stripe reader; 2. solenoid-electric lock, and 3. Xport, which is an ethernet connection) to work separately with the Arduino, but now we are trying to merge everything together. The pcomp experience is slowly coming back to me, which is much like being an auto mechanic when troubleshooting.

Now we have to hack the Arduino code to get the solenoid to release when it reads the N number of an NYU ID card. Fun stuff. Figured out on Tom's site that you can use this breakout board (RJ-45) for the Xport instead of this sold out breakout board, which is $2.00 more expensive. Or, you can get this shield for $15.00.