In work we have a door entry system from which i ran a length of speaker cable to a terminal connection block and from there i have run multiple speaker cables to various desks and placed on the end of the cable a momentary button, this way anyone with a button at there desk can open the door. The problem with that is each time i want to add a new person i have to run new cable.
What i would like to is take an arduino and connect that to the door system and write something that would essentially simulate the closing of a button, if i could access that over the network i could have a little desktop app that anyone could use and i wont have to take the floor up anymore.
does that sound feasible using one of these boards?
You should be able to make a simple circuit using the Arduino to control a transistor or a relay that acts in place of the momentary switch.
If you don't need a high security system then you could probably use some of the "key-fob" transmitters to send a signal to the Arduino to operate the "switch".
If you do want a more secure system then you could either use ESP8266 WiFi modules rather than Arduinos or you could use Arduinos paired with nRF24L01+ transceivers.
If the office has a WiFi network, put one ESP8266 WiFi module by the door with a relay connected in parallel with the switch. The ESP module would have a server on it and anyone could log onto the server from their PC or phone with a browser. That way you only need one ESP module and all of the software is on the ESP module. Add whatever security (password?) that you need to the server.