Another reason for access control is theft or tampering with the network. The cost of theft can mount up considerably. For example with telephone companies not just loosing income but also having to pay the international telephone company foreign currency for the fraudulent calls.

Using a digital key ensures that keys cannot be lost and only one key is required to open any number of locks. A lost or stolen key can be disabled in seconds.

ACS has been designed to meet the needs of networks security problems. Our philosophy is to disable the existing door locking mechanism therefore it is low cost and easy to retrofit to any type of cabinet. The locking mechanism utilises state of the art, reliable, low power consumption piezo electronics.

In the unlikely event of a lock failure ACS is designed to fail in the unlocked position allowing easy maintenance of the system. Any failures would of course be reported to the system control for immediate attention.

Each Lock Control Unit (LCU) can control upto four locks, allowing different access for each engineer depending on his skills, ie Electronics, Jumper / patch field, Batteries and Transmission.

Only one pair of wires per location (i.e. cabinet), no local power is required on the one lock version.

An optional engineering telephone point is available once the door is open.

Plug and play hardware architecture with locks and equipment being automatically recognised and configured as they are connected to the system.

"Open too long" warnings, when a door is left open for more than a specified time

Door closed but not locked, the system can call the engineer that has just closed the door before he leaves the site, thus preventing another visit.

Alarms can be distributed by the following methods

The ACS System Manager (SM) performs the management of locations, user, user groups and keys. It is written is .NET ASP and is operated from Internet Explorer via HTML. This allows management from any terminal with no client software required.

Full User security is required to access the system manager.

The Alarm Panel (AP) is designed to reside in the network operations centre (NOC) and allow a visual access to the current alarms and events occurring in the locking system. Multiple alarm panels can be displayed from one locking system.

Locks can be controlled via the alarm panel allowing remote control of locks in the field for emergency access.

The Lock Supervisor (LS) server controls the operations of the locks dealing with open requests and alarms passing them onto the AP for display. More than one LS can be present in one system making the solution fully scaleable and fault tolerant. In smaller systems this server can also hold the SQL database.

The Voice Server (VC) is an optional sub system that allows the locking system to send alerts via phone. For example if a door is forced open the VC can call all managers responsible for that area and tell them the location and time of the break-in. With the option for a response to show that they will deal with the problem and therefore stop calling other people.

ACS can use two different electronic keys, either Dallas iButton or a proximity card. Where the customer does not already use proximity card for other security devices we recommend the iButton as a more cost effective solution.

The iButton has a unique 64bit code, it is the size of a small coin and very robust with an operating temperature range of -40C to +85C

The Building Control Unit (BCU) is a 19" rack mounted unit that controls and powers the LCUs. It communicates to the lock supervisor over TCP/IP either via LAN or modem. All data transmitted is encrypted for security

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Lock Control Units (LCU) control upto 4 locks in a cabinet. They can be locally powered however a one lock LCU can be remotely powered upto 4 miles. The more locks connected to an LCU shortens the remote powering capabilities.

ACS has an extensive reporting module that will allow statistics and alarm monitoring, these reports can be printed or converted to Adobe Acrobat or Excel formats for distribution and further analysis. Additional customer specific reports can be designed using Crystal reports.

ACS uses a multilingual database for the language prompts on screen. Users can select the language they wish to use, which is very useful where two different languages are used, for example in large networks maintained across country borders. If ACS is not currently translated into your language, translation can be achieved in one or two days by the user or a translator.