In some cases, it may be desirable to lock and unlock doors automatically. This is often done on buildings which are open to the public during the day, but are closed at night. In these cases, automatic locking and unlocking eliminates the need for a person to perform this function manually.

As indicated above, all doors which have a card reader already have the capability to be programmed to lock and unlock automatically.

In some cases however, the building management may wish to automatically lock and unlock doors that are not equipped with a card reader.

Doors which lock and unlock automatically but which do not have a card reader are called “Automatically Locked” doors. Automatically locked doors can be programmed to lock and unlock at specific times just like card reader controlled doors can. The cost of an automatically-locked door is less than the cost of a card reader controlled door.

Normally, automatically locked doors are used in conjunction with card reader doors. For example, in many buildings, there are four doors at each building entrance. To permit night entrance, one of these four doors is equipped with a card reader. The other three doors are equipped with electric lock hardware to allow them to be automatically locked. All four doors are then programmed to automatically lock and unlock at the same time.

Automatically locked doors usually also provide the “Door-Open-Too-Long” (OTL) monitoring feature to prevent them from being propped open.

MONITORED DOORS

In some cases, it is desirable to have door status monitoring on doors which are not card reader controlled and not automatically locked. A door that is connected to the access control system for monitoring purposes only is called a “monitored door”.

To create a monitored door, a door position switch is installed on the door and wired into the access control field panel.

When a monitored door is opened, it reports to the access control system server computer. The actions to be taken when the door is opened can vary depending on how the system has been configured.

For example, at the Administration Building, there is a door that leads to the roof. The person in charge, the security coordinator, wants to know anytime that this door is opened. The Clients arranges to have this door monitored by the access control system.

When the door to the roof is opened, it sounds an alert at the access control system server computer, notifying Clients. In addition, the event is recorded on the system journal at the server computer allowing future recall through the reporting feature.

Monitored doors can be configured to cause other system events to occur, such as sound audible alarms, turn on lights, etc. The actual sequence of events (what device is activated, when, for how long) can be defined on a door-by-door basis through the access control system software.