Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
That is interesting, but the District has already said months ago that they were going to start issuing long range cards. They could even charge for them and many people, including me, would pay for them. But apparently, they have now rejected the idea. Is there some reason why these UHF cards would be difficult or costly to implement? Please be specific as to how a UHF card can be made that will work with the current gates.
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Take the following with a big grain of salt. I worked at HID Global for 15 years, which makes the big square grey readers that The Villages uses at the gates. They also make the card printers that print your ID cards, and probably make some or all of the cards themselves. But cards and readers were not my area of expertise. This was all a different department although I worked in the same company.
I don't know if my link came through or not in the original post, but I linked to one of the UHF cards that is currently sold by HID, as an example.
Here is the URL in words: http colon forward-slash forward-slash www dot hidglobal dot com forward-slash products forward-slash sio-enabled-uhf-iclass-card (that is a dual-technology card, the other one that is single frequency ends in sio-enabled-uhf-card).
This particular UHF cards at that URL above are "secure", meaning they cannot be cloned, nor can something be cloned to it. (If it says "SIO" or "Seos" then it is probably the secure type)
I don't know the price difference to the current cards but I don't think it would be a big difference. These UHF cards are NOT the ones with batteries.
That point about the secure cards aside, there are "older" UHF cards that are not as secure, which may work. But you may need more tools and expertise than just the $20 cloner. I'll ask some old colleagues because I'm actually curious too.
Anyway, The Villages would need to make sure that if their reader has UHF capability (some older ones don't), that the UHF technology is "turned on" in the readers. I don't know if it is already. Also, if some people have the current 125kHz cards and some other people have UHF cards, they would need to have both technologies "turned on" in the reader. And then they would configure the reader to have an order of preference in which the readers check for 125kHz vs UHF first, second, etc. I believe.
Normally when you are transitioning from one technology to another, you issue dual technology cards just in case any of your readers are so old that they can't be used with the newer technology. I don't know if that is the case here.
p.s. for a yearly subscription per user, The Villages could also put your gate card on your phone and use bluetooth (30 feet) to open the gate as you drive up. That would be expensive, but they could charge you $12 a year or something.