Continued Growth Projected For Access Control

Security industry forecasts all indicate that the two strongest areas of market growth for the security industry will be video surveillance and access control. Market growth means more than the total number of dollars that will be spent. It means that along with requests for upgrades to existing systems, customers who had not previously wanted access control will be looking for solutions.

While the major media reports on the mega systems and global projects, most locksmiths are selling access control a door or two at a time. And although many of us have the technical knowledge for giant projects, most of our customers are looking for inexpensive and easy to operate solutions, not insurmountable cyber-challenges with huge price tags.

That’s why Dortronics came out with the 8960 EZ-Access System. Dortronics knows that in between your major projects, you need a product that will satisfy the other 99 percent of your customers, and you might as well use theirs.

The 8960 has some very attractive features, and seems to have been designed with the typical end-user’s most frequently requested features in mind.

The controller can support two separate openings each with a reader; or a single opening with entry/egress readers; or two openings with a single reader. Since the unit has two controllable relays as well as a controllable auxiliary output, you have several options for custom applications.

The 8960 is classified as a standalone access control, because it does not connect to a network to operate. It requires 12 VDC which can be easily arranged with a plug-in transformer.
It also requires an electric locking device, which can be just about anything you want. For example since it is suitable of outdoors as well as indoor applications, you could operate a gate operator for parking control applications.

A card reader and/or keypad is required. Typically one for each opening, although one keypad could be ostensibly used to control two doors. The 8960 uses 26 bit Wiegand interface between the reader and the controller; the defacto protocol for reader to controller connections.

The 8960 has a 2,000-credential capacity, and a 2,000-event audit trail.

The 8960 can be deployed and programmed without a computer. However, the 8960 will communicate via USB with a PC for generating an activity log. This is a helpful diagnostic aid if you’re troubleshooting, and it costs the end-user and installer nothing extra to use except for the purchase of the software.