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Frequently Asked Questions
What ingress and impact rating does a reader need?
Match it to the mounting position, not to the building - an external reader needs protection against driven water, dust, temperature extremes and physical attack.
Ingress protection is stated as a two-digit rating covering solids and liquids. Anything outdoors or in a wash-down area should be rated for water jets rather than mere splashing.
Temperature range is regularly overlooked. Displays and batteries in particular behave badly at the extremes, and the specification has to cover the site's worst day rather than its average.
Impact resistance is a separate rating, and it matters on any reader within reach in a public area. So does the fixing: a reader with exposed screws can simply be removed.
Ultraviolet stability determines whether the housing is still intact in five years or chalky and cracked.
For gates and car parks, add vibration to the list - a reader on a moving barrier post endures far more than a wall-mounted one.
How much does read range vary, and what affects it?
Considerably - and metal, mounting, credential type and the transmit power of the reader all reduce it.
Every reader has a stated range measured under ideal conditions with a specific credential. Real installations rarely match it.
Metal is the main culprit. A reader mounted on a metal frame, mullion or door leaf will read at a fraction of its rated distance unless it is a model designed for metal mounting with an isolating spacer.
Credential form factor matters too. A thin card, a fob and a wristband do not present the same antenna, so the same reader gives different ranges with each.
Nearby readers interfere with one another. Manufacturers publish a minimum separation, and doors in a bank of turnstiles are the usual place this is discovered.
Where range genuinely needs to be long - a vehicle lane, a hands-free door - that is a different product category rather than a setting on a standard reader.
Should readers be multi-technology?
Yes on any site with an existing credential population, because it is what allows a migration to happen gradually instead of overnight.
A multi-technology reader accepts both the legacy credential and the intended replacement. Readers are changed first, then cards are reissued as they come up for renewal or as people are re-badged.
Without it, the reader change and the card change must happen simultaneously across the whole estate, which is disruptive and expensive on any population of size.
The one caution: a multi-technology reader that keeps accepting the insecure legacy credential indefinitely provides only the security of the weakest one it accepts. Migration needs an end date and the legacy format needs to be switched off.
Check which formats are supported before purchase. Support for a technology family is not the same as support for a specific card format already in use on site.
Where should a second factor be required?
On the doors where the consequence of a stolen or copied credential is unacceptable - not everywhere.
Two-factor authentication at a door means presenting a credential and something else: a PIN, or a biometric. It roughly doubles the time to pass and adds friction, so it belongs where it is earned.
Server rooms, cash handling, pharmaceutical and controlled-substance stores, and laboratories are the usual candidates.
Many systems support requiring a second factor only outside working hours, which is a good compromise on doors that see heavy daytime traffic.
Do not use a second factor as a substitute for replacing a weak credential technology. It compensates at one door; the underlying population is still copyable everywhere else.
Where throughput matters, model the queue. A door with a hundred people arriving in ten minutes cannot afford several seconds each.
How is a reader protected against tampering?
With a tamper switch, a supervised connection to the controller, and no useful decision-making inside the reader itself.
A tamper switch reports removal from the wall. It only helps if the controller is actually monitoring the input and someone acts on the alarm.
The wiring behind the reader is the real exposure. On the legacy interface, the credential number travels in clear and can be recorded or replayed by anyone who reaches those wires. An encrypted, supervised protocol removes that attack.
Supervision also detects substitution: if the reader is swapped for another device, the controller notices rather than accepting whatever the new device sends.
Keeping the access decision at the controller matters here too. A reader that decides for itself and simply closes a relay can be bypassed with a short circuit.
Anti-tamper fixings and back-boxes that conceal the cable entry are cheap and worthwhile in public areas.
Do readers need their own power supply?
Usually not a separate one - most draw power from the controller or over the network cable - but the calculation needs doing rather than assuming.
Readers are typically powered from the access controller over the same cable that carries data. That works until the total load across several readers, plus cable voltage drop over distance, takes the supply below specification.
Illuminated keypads, displays, biometric sensors and heaters draw far more than a plain card reader, and a panel sized for six simple readers may not run six biometric ones.
Cable run length is the usual failure. Voltage drop over a long run leaves the reader browning out intermittently, which presents as unreliable reads rather than as a power fault.
Network-powered readers move the problem to the network switch, where the total budget and per-port limits need the same check.
Whatever the source, standby power has to cover the readers as well as the locks, or the doors go dark in an outage.
What about hygiene and touchless operation?
Contactless card and mobile readers are already touchless; the ones that require contact are keypads and most fingerprint sensors.
Card, fob and mobile credentials are read at a distance with no contact, so they raise no hygiene question at all.
Keypads are touched by everyone. Where that matters, options are a cleanable surface - a sealed membrane or a glass capacitive panel - or replacing the PIN with a mobile second factor.
Fingerprint readers require contact by design. Contactless alternatives read the hand or face instead, at higher cost and with their own privacy considerations.
Cleaning is a materials question. Repeated use of aggressive disinfectant crazes some plastics and lifts printed legends, so check the manufacturer's list of approved cleaning agents before adopting a regime.
For a genuinely hands-free door, a long-range or mobile reader combined with an automatic operator removes contact from the whole sequence, not just the reader.