In an age where everything is “smart” from cards to phones to home appliances, it is only natural that manufacturers are taking a fresh look at the access control reader and asking, “how can we make it do more than just read a specific card technology?” The results are a new and upcoming generation of smarter, more powerful and more secure readers that can effectively take users forward from whatever legacy technology they have now to whatever they choose 10 to 15 years from now.
“We are always out there trying to match the requirements to the end users’ needs,” says Walter Helms, vice president and CTO, Matrix Systems, Miamisburg, Ohio. “From my perspective, on the integration side readers used to be straight input devices. They didn’t bring much to system intelligence. You found a reader that could read back and that is all you had to worry about. But now, intelligence in the readers is increasing and they are becoming an active part of the overall system.”