Elsys ACS: a universal system with unique capabilities.

Elsys ACS: a universal system with unique capabilities.

Elsys ACS: a universal system with unique capabilities

In recent years, the requirements of customers of access control systems have become much more diverse: — the range of ACS consumers has increased, primarily due to those who have minimal requirements for the system — preventing unauthorized persons from entering the territory and, possibly, accounting for the working hours of employees; — «appetite comes with eating» — having assessed the advantages of automating the access process to the enterprise, the owners of the system decide to expand it, thereby implying the scalability and flexibility of the system; — customers with experience in operating ACS, wanting to «squeeze the maximum» out of it, have significantly increased their requirements for the functionality of the system.

Either several different systems or the Elsys ACS can satisfy such different requirements.

By choosing Elsys as the hardware base and purchasing a starter kit for creating the «Velcom» ACS, the customer will immediately receive both the minimum price for small systems, and the functionality of accounting for working hours, and the ability to expand the ACS with additional Elsys-MB controllers of any modification.

Elsys-MB controllers provide servicing of doors, turnstiles, gateways, gates, barriers and are available in several versions, fully compatible with the exchange protocol: Pro4, Pro, Standard, Light and SM The ability to select the type of controller, memory expansion module of various capacities — this is the versatility, scalability and flexibility of the system.

The Elsys ACS has unique functional capabilities, and these capabilities are transferred by the manufacturer to the hands of installers and system administrators. This is confirmed by two examples of solving non-trivial problems based on the ELSYS system equipment.

Example No. 1. Banks often use a «gateway» two-door vestibule, in which the doors can only be opened one after the other, except for the forced unlocking mode.

For permanent employees, after presenting their card, entering the vestibule and closing the outer door, the inner door opens automatically. Holders of temporary and one-time passes, after entering the vestibule, wait for the operator's command to open one of the doors — the inner one if access is granted, and the outer one if it is denied. For one-time visitors leaving the bank building, access to the gateway is confirmed by presenting the card of the accompanying employee.

In the controllers of most ACS, the responses of output elements (relays) to events in the system are set «rigidly» or provide a limited number of options. Therefore, the required algorithm can be implemented only partially — for example, differentiation of the passage method depending on the type of the presented pass is not ensured.

The use of human presence sensors in the vestibule (photocells, contact mats, etc.) is also hampered by the «rigidity» of the controller logic, which does not allow its algorithm to be properly changed.

These limitations may result in insufficient protection against abnormal overcoming, uninformative display of events (the system issues messages and displays events from two separate doors, and not from the gateway as a whole).

Controller-based circuit Elsys-MB-Pro allows you to implement the required control logic due to the built-in mechanism of internal interactions of the controller inputs and outputs. The Elsys ACS software has a set of standard configurations, including for gateways.

Fig. 1. Gateway diagram based on the ELSYS-MB-Pro controller

In addition to standard functions, the gateway based on the Elsys controller provides:
• the ability to pass through exclusively for holders of passes of specified categories;
• protection against simultaneous presentation of passes for entry and exit;
• the ability to block the gateway vestibule and readers while awaiting the operator's decision and issuing appropriate notifications in emergency situations;
• display of all events from the gateway as from an integrated system, including on facility plans;
• ability to correctly include the gateway in the working time accounting system.

Example No. 2. Automatic hardware unlocking of access points on evacuation routes based on fire alarm signals.

The tool for solving the task in the Elsys ACS is the mechanism of hardware inter-controller interactions. The reaction «Generate a message to controllers» can be assigned to any external event. In this case, either all controllers or one of them can be selected as the addressee. In turn, messages received from another controller can initiate assigned reactions in each controller.

The use of inter-controller interaction provides Elsys ACS with two significant advantages. Firstly, it is sufficient to connect the output contacts of the fire alarm control panel to only one nearest controller, without connecting additional communications to all access points. Secondly, if different output contacts correspond to fire zones in the control panel, then by connecting these contacts to different inputs of the same controller, it is possible to organize selective unblocking of access points in the corresponding zones.

It is appropriate to emphasize that unblocking is carried out without the participation of the control computer exclusively by the hardware of the controllers.

The article was published in the journal “Security Technologies” No. 4(13)-2010, Republic of Belarus, Minsk, aercom.by