Hi,

Thanks for checking back. It did arrive late last night and worked like a charm. It's really quite simple. Exactly as described, very quick read and then very quick write. Tested and opens gate fine.

First one must have been a lemon.

I see you joined TOTV in 2023.
I’ve lived here 16 years. Yes, there are doofuses who drive through the gates and break off the arms. They are always repaired in 2 days. The gate cameras record the whole thing , and bill the driver $250.
I’m not sure where you are located where the arms that break are never fixed.
I live near a manned gate, and the worker is extremely busy managing two lanes of incoming traffic, with golf carts and bikers crossing immediately once the cars are through the gate.
They do a great job.
Those same doofuses who try to run the gate and break off the arms would be running down golf cart drivers.
The card system calms traffic and records every vehicle coming and going. No complaints from me.

I just had 2 cars done and they work fine as long as you are close enough to the pad.
Contact Joe Striano 845-542-7365, or Mustgang428@gmail.com.

Gates are needed to slow down cars running thru at 50 mph.... people here like to speed...otherwise golf carts would never stand a chance.

You know what’s hilarious?

ANY RFID tag will work on our gates.

Don’t believe me? Try any other fob or if you don’t have one, have a visitor swipe his/her company employee access card, a key fob to any parking garage, etc. on any of our residence only readers and the gate will spring right open!

We discovered this when visiting as guests ourselves, reaching for the red button with our keys in hand (and garage fob to our condo back in Cleveland attached to the keychain), and hearing the reader beep before actually pressing the button.

So our readers don’t actually check your villages-issued ID at all - they simply open for any passive RFID tag. It’s hilarious - especially given the 11 pages of this thread - and swiping is therefore totally unnecessary.

And since the gates only purpose is understandably safety, not security (ie to bring traffic to a stop at the village entrances), I’m firmly in the camp of removing both the readers and separate resident only entrances and just keeping the gates in construction / car sensing mode.

This would, of course, eliminate the need to designate a visitor lane and any false sense of security the family may want you to have living in a “gated community.” But let’s at least be honest here.

To me, what’s most frustrating is surely the family’s upper echelon not only knows about this community “feature” but also choose to continue to promote the false sense of security by building such resident-only entrances. Instead, they ignored the whole pesky access control list / database maintenance overhead a resident might understandably assume is included in our “not-an-HOA” monthly amenity fees.

Anyway, just sharing this as I hate seeing people taken advantage of - even if those same people lock the doors to their convertible while leaving the top down.

And I’m shocked more people don’t know about this already as we’ve been using other fobs for years. Maybe now that it’s out and Peter Bernard Bubble Wraps it (IYKYK) - it might spur the family to minimally acknowledge it and hopefully make a change: actually enforce gate security or remove the nonsensical scanners altogether.

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Looking forward to another 50 posts contradicting this revelation.

If anyone cares to contradict me, DM me and I'll drive to you and test it directly with a fob I use from our garage back in Ohio.

I really don't see the point of your post. Most people know that anyone can open the gate by just pressing the red button. So, there should no "false" sense of security. The gates are mostly for traffic control, not security. I think the purpose for the visitor lane is to allow visitors to ask for directions or other information without delaying the residents. I am still waiting for these long range gate cards that The Villages has been promising for years, but they never seem to be able to produce. Without them, many people still need to open their window to open the gate unless they have a cloned mirror card.

Contradictions are what got the thread over 150 posts.:1rotfl::1rotfl:

My point is I saw multiple people in this thread buying RFID tag duplicator at around $20 to clone their cards. You can use any RFID card and it will open.

So not sure why you then say people have to have a cloned mirror card if you agree with me that any tag will work.

The mirror devices use a small round disc that you buy from Amazon. As far as I know, these discs are blank, and they will not work until they are programmed by some type of duplicator. Any programmed disc might work as you claim, but they still need to be programmed by something. You can buy a duplicator from Amazon for less than $20. Am I missing something?

Why care how many posts? More posts more traffic, more traffic the more TOTVs can make advertising. It posts get out of hand “ they” shut it down.

I am agreement with some supervisors that believe that the entrance gates should work just like the auto open exit gates with no need for using any gate card to open any gate. And, this type of operation might save some money!

From testing tonight:
- A car key fob will not work, at least not an Audi fob
- A blank fob will not work

A guess: there are a finite number of digits that can be programmed on a card so it is not surprising that a random card might have the same digits as a valid Villages card.

Unfortunately, I don’t have another programmed 125khz card to test.

Note: the people cloning cards are not replacing a lost card or creating a third card. They are copying a card to a chip that can be placed in the side view mirror so the gate will open without the need to roll down the window and stick your arm out. Discovering that your parking garage fob also works the gates is interesting but doesn’t provide the solution that the closers are producing.

Agree 100% with this (and thanks for testing) and with what retiredguy said about the need to program a RFID tag - not just have a blank.

I think we can shut it down now, but suffice it to say:

1. The RFID scan isn't "secure"

2. Unless you have rigged your car/mirror with a tag, it's a bit of an annoyance to have to swipe when you realize it's not doing anything that pushing the red button wouldn't do.

3. As a result of both #1 and #2, many residents would rather keep the gates but ditch the scanning.