About doors

A door entity represents a physical barrier. Often, this is an actual door but it could also be a gate, a turnstile, or any other controllable barrier. Each door has two sides, named In and Out by default. Each side is an access point (entrance or exit) to a secured area.

There are three basic door configurations:

Card in/Card Out - 2 readers are required
Card In/REX Out - 1 reader is required
Readerless doors - No readers are required

Readerless doors

If a reader is not required for a door configuration, the I/Os found on the interface modules (such as HID VertX V200 and V300) can be used to control the REX, door sensor, and lock. You do not need to link any access rules to a readerless door. However, you can still assign unlock schedules to readerless doors.

Some examples of where readerless doors might be used could include the following:

Fire exits - Locked from the outside, with a push-bar to open the door from the inside using a REX.
Stadiums/Theatres/Arenas - Everyone must enter through the ticket booth but once the event is finished, many exits become available to decrease congestion at the main entrance.

Door wiring

It is a best practice to have an electrician verify the functionality between all door sensors and actuators.

Door buzzers

You can assign an access control unit output to sound a buzzer from the door Hardware tab. The Buzzer does not refer to the reader’s beeper, but an external buzzer that is wired to an output relay on the access control unit. The buzzer output is triggered by the Sound buzzer and Silence buzzeractions.

Entry sensors

You can configure an entry sensor on each side of a door to increase the accuracy of people counting and the application of advanced access restriction rules on areas, such as antipassback and first-person-in rule. The system can only generate the Entry detected event when an entry sensor is triggered. In the absence of an entry sensor, the door sensor is used, and entry is assumed when the door sensor is triggered. If both types of sensors are absent, entry is assumed when an access is granted.

Two-person rule

You can protect a highly secured area with the two-person rule. The two-person rule is the access restriction placed on a door that requires two cardholders (including visitors) to present their credentials within a certain delay of each other in order to gain access.

NOTE: A visitor that requires a host cannot be counted as one of the two people in the two-person rule.

TIP: A door can be configured in Security Center to protect a physical area (a room) without necessarily configuring a secured area if no other types of access restrictions need to be enforced.