Hi @Gyromike, nice project.
I’ve not studied your code, but from your description I guess that the system won’t work without your Wi-Fi and the Blynk server that you’re using being online?
I have a somewhat simpler system which uses just one RFID tag code (because I want the unique tag that’s used to access your community swimming pool to also open our gate). My single code is hard-coded into my sketch, but Blynk can be used to release the gate remotely, and a Blynk table is used to store info about when the gate has been released and how.
I get around the need to be online all the time by hard-coding my single RFID code I to my sketch (easy for me with gust one code) and using a non-blocking connection that will carry-on working if there’s no internet connection, and will try to re-connect periodically.
Had I needed to use more codes then I’d probably have explored the idea of storing them in the SPIFFS memory of the NodeMCU, with an option to add/remove via Blynk.
When I put my system together it worked perfectly on the bench, but went haywire when I connected it up to the gate release. My gate uses an AC release, which makes a buzzing noise for the 5 seconds that it’s avtivated. It turns-out that the issue was EMF feedback from the coil on the gate release, which I eventually solved with a capacitor across the sontacts of the relay. From memory, I think it was around 100uf.
If you, or anyone else trying this project, has similar issues with an AC lock release then this tip might save you a bit of head scratching.
Here’s some info on my project, which is very different because it uses Node-Red and MQTT as well as Blynk…
Pete.