What Happens When Visitors Or Deliveries Come To Your Electric Gates?
Electric gates are great but they’re even better when you control access through your gates. Motors open and close electric gates at the touch of a button. This means that you don’t have to push or pull them open or closed yourself. Stay in your car while it’s raining and let them do the work for you without getting wet. But what happens when visitors or deliveries arrive at the closed gates. How do they tell you that they are there? How do people that you are happy to let through operate the gates themselves? That’s when you need gate access control systems.
Identifying anyone who you are happy to open the gates for and keeping them shut when you don’t want someone else to come onto your property all falls under the subject of access control. Here’s our guide to access control. It will show you how you can easily identify and let the right people in and keep undesirables out.
Gate Access Control Keypads
At its simplest, a gate access control system can include a keypad mounted outside the gates. You can give a code to anyone who you want to give total access to. They simply enter their code into the keypad to operate the gates. Most keypads allow you to create a number of codes so your family or friends can have their own. Or you can keep it simple and give everyone the same code.
Fob and card readers work in a similar way but there is no numerical keypad. Instead, each approved visitor has their own plastic coded card or key fob. To get in, they simply tap their card or fob onto a reader mounted outside the gates.
Intercom Gate Access Control Systems
Let’s assume that you will have more visitors than the handful you are happy to give their own access control to. Then how do you vet and allow these unknown visitors in? This is where intercom systems are very useful. An intercom system uses a call unit mounted outside the gates and a receiver unit inside the house. Modern GSM gate access control systems even allow you to use your smartphone as the receiver unit.
When a visitor arrives the gates, they press a button on the call unit that calls the house receiver. You answer and speak to the visitor via the microphones and speakers built into the system. You can even have video intercoms that allow you to see your visitor as well as talk to them.
If you decide you want to let them in, you press a gate release button on the receiver or you phone app and the gates open.
How Do Intercom Systems Work?
Intercoms rely on communication between the call unit, receiver and the gate control system. For short distances where the gate is near the house, wired intercoms provide good communication. If you don’t want to have extra cables laid underground from your house to the gate or the gate is a long way from the house, wireless communicating intercoms are available. These can talk to each other via radio, Wi-Fi or GSM (mobile phone) signals depending on the choice of system.
In some cases, you might be out when a visitor or delivery arrives but still want to control who gets in. You could have a tradesman entrance option or set the gates to open for anyone while you’re out. But that defeats the object of having electric gates for security.
Modern GSM systems use your smartphone as the receiver unit. These can be operated from anywhere in the world where you have a mobile signal or Wi-Fi access. You could be at work, at a restaurant or on a beach holiday in the Maldives. But still know when someone is at your gates asking to be let in.
If you are looking into electric gates, access control should be on your list of things to think about. And if you have existing electric gates but need to upgrade your access control, we can update, service or install anything you need. Contact us now for friendly support and advice.
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