Basics of Access Control

Hello and welcome to Kantech training video. Today we're going to talk about the basics of access control. What is access control? Access control is method of controlling passage into or out of an area. typical Kantech setup for access control is an access controller. This is what takes the decision to let people in or out. It also manages unlock schedules and many other things. reader or keypad. This allows you to enter your unique credentials to gain access. door contact. This allows the controller to see if the door is open or closed. door strike or magnetic lock. This will release the door when you get an access granted. request to exit. This allows you to exit an area without entering any credentials. So how does this all work? Let's have look at each component. The door strike. There are many types of locking devices. The most common is door strike. The majority will unlock the door when powered up. The door contact. This shows the position of the door opened or closed. This will allow us to know if the door was opened without permission or was left open. An access card. The card is actually just big antenna and chip. The chip's powered through the antenna, so there is no power source included. Once it's powered, it will transmit string of zeros and ones at specific frequency. The reader or keypad. The reader transmits on specific frequency. When card answers, it sends the information it read to the controller. The reader will only report the information it reads from the card. It does not make any decisions on whether to give access or not. It only sees string of zeros and ones and sends this information in Wiegand format to the controller. request to exit unit. This is unit that will tell the controller that someone is trying to exit the room without having to enter any credentials. The request to exit is usually motion infrared detector or simply manually activated button. The request to exit or Rex for short will transmit an infrared beam in front of the door. When it detects someone approaching the door, it will send request to the controller to unlock the door. An access controller. This is the brains of the operation. It manages everything. It constantly monitors the door contact to know when the door is open or not. It will unlock the door. It will manage the unlock schedule if you wish to have the door unlocked for period of time. It will manage request to exit requests. It will receive the card information from the reader and decrypt the information to see if this user has the right to access this door at this time and many other functions. How does it know what the string of zeros and ones mean? It uses decryption template to translate the binary string into card number. If the decryption matches the encryption on the card, it will read the correct card number and give access. If it's the wrong decryption, it will send an access denied message and not unlock the door. How does the controller know which user should have access or not? Everything is programmed from the Entrapass software on computer.