Cards, fobs and the intercom: what to do with what the front desk already has

Cards and fobs: keep them, with a deadline

Proximity cards and fobs usually keep working on the new terminals, as long as the technology is compatible, and that's a big help during the transition: a resident who hasn't enrolled their face yet gets in with the same card as always. The care is in not letting that become permanent. A card is something you lend, lose and copy, and the condominium doesn't know how many are in circulation.

A good transition establishes that the card is the backup method, keeps the ones already enrolled and stops issuing new ones. Over time, the active cards become few and known.

Garage remotes

The garage remote is the hardest item to retire, because a face doesn't solve the entry of a car with its windows up. Most condominiums keep the remote for vehicles and use the face at the garage's pedestrian door. What's worth reviewing is the record of the remotes: how many exist, whose they are and which were lost. Fixed-code remote systems, which can be cloned, deserve replacement regardless of the rest.

A simple practice is to number each remote and record its unit in the same enrollment as the people. When a resident moves out, the administration knows which remotes to ask back, and a lost remote can be deactivated without replacing the whole building's.

The intercom stays

Face recognition doesn't replace the intercom, because a visitor without an invitation still needs to talk to someone. The existing intercom, whether conventional or app-based, stays as it is, and the access system takes care of the doors. When the two come from different suppliers, you have to define who opens what: if the intercom drives the lock directly, that opening doesn't show up in the access system's history, and that should be a conscious decision.

Where possible, the intercom's release goes through the access system, so the record is kept in one place. If that isn't possible with the current intercom, at least note in the proposal that those openings stay out of the history, so nobody discovers that only when they need a record.

Terminals already in place

Many condominiums already have face recognition terminals from an earlier installation, sometimes from a company that no longer provides support. If the devices are compatible with the new system, they can be reused, and the enrollment stored on them, with photos, cards and fingerprints, imported instead of redone. That saves the investment in terminals and weeks of re-enrollment.

Before counting on it, ask the new supplier to confirm compatibility model by model, and to say what will be imported and what won't. Very old terminals, without face reading or with little memory, may be worth more as spare parts than as the main door.

A transition timeline

A transition without surprises usually follows this order:

• Survey: which methods exist today, how many cards and remotes are active and which terminals can be reused.
• Installation with overlap: the new system goes in, and the old one keeps working as a backup.
• Enrollment: residents and staff enroll their faces, with the card as the alternative path.
• Cutoff: issuing new cards stops, lost ones are deactivated and whatever of the old system isn't reused is switched off.
• Review: a few months later, the list of active cards and remotes is checked again.

How Abriu handles it

At Abriu, compatible Hikvision terminals are reused, and the import reads every user of each terminal, with face, cards and fingerprints, shows a preview and creates the people keeping the numbers they already had. Cards keep working as a backup method in the same enrollment, and deactivating a person removes their face and cards from every terminal at once.

The intercom and the garage remotes are not part of Abriu and stay as they are; when the intercom starts opening the door through the system, the opening goes into the history. The site visit confirms, model by model, what can be reused before the proposal.