Q: What happens if I accidentally activate the fob?
A: When the fob is activated, awakened cores and readers will detect the fob if it is in their vicinity. If none are present in the area, nothing happens. If the fob is within the Bluetooth range of a core or reader that has been awakened by another person, it may activate that device if the access rights are appropriate.
Q: How do I update access rights on the fob?
A: Fobs can be synchronized with any mobile app that has a key for the site where the fob is registered. The fob and the app are not paired in any way. The app reaches out the cloud to retrieve the correct and most up to date access rights for the fob being synchronized. The phone used to synchronize cannot view or modify the access rights of the fob.
Q: Is there a programming station for the fobs for users without smart phone access?
A: Any compatible tablet, such as an iPad, can be setup like a kiosk in a common area with the app installed to synchronize and update fob rights. This could be done for janitorial staff for instance. They could sync their fobs in the lobby prior to entering the rest of the facility.
Q: Do I need to visit the door to delete the fob access?
A: Not necessarily. Fobs can be set to expire at a certain date. If an expiration date was set you may not need to blacklist a lost of stolen fob. If you are concerned about a specific fob that was lost it can be locally added to blacklists on cores you want to remove access to.
Q: Why does it take so long to sync a fob that has many access privileges?
A: Unlike a phone which receives its access rights over wifi or cellular data, the fob is programmed by the mobile device over Bluetooth Low Energy which limits the data transfer speed to a theoretical maximum of 2 Mb/s (megabits/ second) with BLE 5.0 and 1Mb/s for versions of BLE 4. This equates to 250 kB/ s (kilobytesper second). In addition the maximum transmission unit (MTU) is 23 bytes. 4 of the 23 bytes are used for communication management and are considered overhead, leaving only 18 bytes per transmission packet. The time between transmission packets can average up to 30 milliseconds. This transmission overhead will increase the amount of time required to transfer data on top of the transmission throughput speed.
Therefore, typically time to program a fob is approximately:
BLE 4.0 BLE 5.0
- Fob with access to 1 door: 1 second 1 second
- Fob with access to 10 doors 5 seconds 3 seconds
- Fob with access to 100 doors: 1 minute 30 seconds
- Fob with access to 1000 doors: 9 minutes 4 minutes
- Fob with access to 4000 doors (maximum): 34 minutes 20 minutes
These numbers assume maximum efficiency