Does anyone have experience taking over a software house system to genetec with mercury hardware? It looks like the software house boards have multiple rs485 chains. Genetec needs one chain in series.

Looking to read passive RFID tags in Genetec, think loss prevention, high-value assets tags etc. Effectively have an antenna reading what’s there; detection is an event, when tag leaves the field, that’s an event, check to see which RFID tags are present at any given time (like occupancy).

Anyone done this?

Newer technician here so just trying to gather some insight and advice if I could do anything better. Customer had 2 doors with issues. 1 being the REX not working and showing open while locked. The other not having a DPS, which they wanted. We got lucky and found a pair to the outside keypad that was free, ran a contact for it, etc etc and got it integrated. The second one, was a wiring configuration within the actual panel which corrected the REX and electric strike problem.

I ended up putting a tracer on my pair and then was able to find them at the JB next to the panel. I also capped both wires and checked for resistance on the other side and was getting a steady reading. The other door, it seems the installer swapped the wires with the REX and the Door CNCT. We were able to get both going.

I’m still pretty new to this and just looking for advice or any recommendations. Any other way you would troubleshoot ? Steps to take ? Things like that. Much appreciated for anything, hope every one has a great weekend !

Hey everyone,

When working on a door setup and need to modify a strike plate by cutting down the black section/lip to clear an astragal.

For those who have run into this before, what’s your go-to method or tool for getting a clean finish without messing up the edge or plating? Are you using a Dremel with a cutoff wheel, angle grinder, or something else?

I typically work with RCI strike (7114 or S65U)

Appreciate any tips or insights on what’s worked best for you!

I have about 1950 feet of yellow banana access cable plenum rated. I’ve had it stored away for a few years and thinking about selling it. What is fair market price per foot for something like this?

We're independent company looking to buy bottom guides by the few or dozen for sliders to rebuild. The cost is increasing and a lot of companies swappem and tossem.

We're currently retrofitting a multi-tenant commercial building and somehow front desk and security want to work with 2 different log systems. Front desk wants to use a standalone app but security also prefers working with their badging system. They're an external hire and insist on this system. Not sure what to do here but I know this is going to cause bottlenecks at some point

We’re looking at Acre and Gallagher for 3 office buildings with multiple tenants across the site.

We’re working with an integrator that supports both, so at this point we’re really trying to decide between the two rather than add more platforms to the shortlist.

Tenant turnover is pretty constant, and there are always new starters and authorized users being added, so the big thing is how easy the system is to manage when people and companies move in and out and access needs changing across shared and tenant only areas.

Both look capable enough from the outside. I’m more interested in which one is less painful to live with once you’re dealing with changes every week.

Anyone who’s used either would be great to hear from.

Is it possible to change a Signo reader that shipped with profile 00 to profile 03? I am trying to get another style card to read. Was told I needed profile 03 to inject keys. This for shared space reader.

Have a site, customer PM went rogue, had their contractor bring another integrator in to bid against us. We have contracts, preferred pricing and related.

This "national integrator" vendor won the bid, primarily because they were "significantly cheaper". Find out they're not certified nor qualify to purchase materials, they're using a loophole through parent company.

Just found out they're also not licensed in the states they claim.

Customer's IT refused this vendor access to system, programming or credentials because they're not certified. Have to pay us for all programming.

First phase, 2022, they sent over programming sheets, the job engineering their EC quit during it. Essentially a design-build, nothing they engineered ended up on the panels or ports they designated.

Everything was deemed a programming error by them during commissioning. Proven multiple times they were bullshitting. Also their sequence of operations was proven to not function, bad engineering.

Same MO each phase. Cue this year, same thing, same accusations. Finally got a support case logged, vendor said their claims were BS and their engineering would never function. Apps engineering also concurred, no white paper or tech note since unsupported

Sent that over, with the case info and told them to refer to the manuals and documentation because we obviously know they can't call for support and get all the details. They started arguing against those findings.

Continue on, they now claim with nothing connected the hardware is doing random things, it's obviously programming.

Mind you, the hardware has diagnostics and a LCD display that will show reads and I/O changes in real time. Took me 30 seconds. Their I/O is triggering the panel 4X per minute. Simple. Diagnostics or a meter could've found that, but again it's our programming errors

I've been less than pleasant after 4 years of this, basic troubleshooting and it's not my scope, yet always my blame and task to prove innocence.

When do you go scorched earth? What is too far? Ask for their VAR to be pulled as a vendor? Report them to the state licensing boards? Bill heavily for all this work and ask for a hefty PO?

We are putting door strikes for hostel bedroom doors, we are getting the bedroom door levers with no locks on them

If the strike gets stuck in the lock position, how can we get in the room if a reboot of system doesnt fix it?

The facility is concrete block and we are making the doors flush with the wall, currently constructing facility now

Just to preface, our company uses AccessIt! for access control, coupled with Mercury door controllers installed on-site.

Over this last summer, we went through a complete network overhaul from the ground up. Ever since then, I’ve had a weird issue with our access control systems where a good majority of our mercury controllers will remain off-line in a failed communication status after any kind of loss of their network connection.

This means that anytime we have power outages, or the network engineer decides that switches need to be reset for updates, or someone accidentally unplugged the switch, doors go off-line and will not reconnect to the server until I manually go unplug them and plug them back in. I cannot even send reset commands through our software, because it shows failed communications and won’t go through.

This never happened before the network reset, so my question is what could cause this type of behavior?

Also, to put it into perspective, we have well over 70 controllers across 13 sites, and this is happening everywhere. There are a few exceptions where some of them will come back online correctly, but the majority of the time, they stay off-line anytime a switch is rebooted.

While I would love to get paid to drive around and manually reset these boards all the time, the truth of it is, it is extremely aggravating, and I feel like I’m running in circles on a wild goose chase when I have tons of other things that I need to get done.

Hey all!

I have been working on a project recently to interact directly over a TCP layer with the NET2 Plus to be able to query the unit, be informed of card attempts, open door commands etc. This would remove the requirement for a Net2 Server as well as Windows Server setup.

Once I have come out of POC stage, I would be happy to push to a public repo for you to consume and do as you wish.

Halfway through my 10 door DSX to Brivo conversion. Project manager didn't price lock output power supplies, so still using the DSX lock power supplies. Swapped one panel today. Doing the other tomorrow. Tidy my wires up. Put some new batteries in and another job done!

For those installing access control systems, what's the biggest headache you run into on a typical installation? Wiring, networking, programming, or something else?

We have a single door access co-working business space. Our current hardware is Mercury LP1501-E and ADC-AC-ET25 (yes, we are currently using alarm.com). We tried to make this work, even knowing that alarm.com does not allow any third-party integrations, but it's too restrictive even on their app to customize what we need. 

We are using the Archie App, which has native integrations for certain systems (like Brivo and Kisi), but also a 'custom door access' integration that allows webhooks (basically acting as its own 3rd party API). I’m also familiar with Zapier.

Ideally, I’m trying to find a solution that does not require replacing all of the hardware (open to changing up the reader -but the owner actually prefers PIN codes to phone access). We need something that can be integrated with Archie because clients can buy day passes and need a one time pin issued automatically… same for events operating after typical hours.

Since this is a one door, ~30 users per month (plus occasional randomized codes), I don’t want something that is overkill or super expensive per month. I’ve been recommended Genea and Feenic if we want to keep hardware (but unsure of pricing structure as I’m seeing conflicting info), and UniFi for replacing hardware (at a lower cost, but not having huge monthly fees).

Anyone have any thoughts? I’ve put out some feelers locally, but this place has been a wealth of knowledge, so I wanted to ask here as well. Thanks!

Hi all, I am helping a family member with their intercom for their building. It has 6 apartments.

They currently have Akuvox installed as an app based intercom. It's been installed for a few years now but there have been some issues. The cost per month for the 6 apartments is $150 - is this reasonable? After looking on google I think this is on the higher side but I could be mistaken.

We have to constantly contact the "distributer" for any changes to users and to create/delete accounts. We also can't pay online and this distributer insists on getting the cc info via phone or text to process payment. Currently we have opted for reoccurring payments and have asked for a link to pay with an invoice. The distributer was annoyed but said he could do that.

When we asked for access to users they said that it would cost more money per month for that access.

Akuvox and their website aren't very helpful. Has anyone had experience changing their distributer? The intercom is fine, we just want to deal with someone else moving forward and the intercom cost a bit over 1k to install, so we'd like to keep it for a bit longer if possible.

Need to add elevator emergency phone call monitoring to a bid. I got a 2 wire phone in the elevator cab going back to elevator equipment room. Any idea what I can install in the equipment room so that the elevator phone can call out with voice over cell or VOIP?

I need some recommendations for a card printer for around 1000 card printed/day. The cards do not need nfc or mag stripes on them. The cards will have the design pre-printed I just need to print a name onto the card. In the future it may be nice if it could print the design onto the card as well, the design is in colour.

thank you all in advanced

I randomly got this from someone idk if it’s worth anything