The university campus, which is known as the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, caters for 25,000 students.
The first 30 units have already been installed into lecture venues, computer labs and offices by Salto’s southern African distributor Vision Systems. There are a further 30 to be fitted.
Salto is also supplying a solution for doors for a new building on the campus, while existing doors will be upgraded as budgets allow.
Finding the perfect solution
Johan van Steijn of Vision Systems said: “The management of students and staff is crucial for the University so this was the key application for the system, and [the University] required a proven, future proof access control security solution that would provide 24/7 critical security protection.
“To achieve it a secure solution was needed to provide everything that a hard wired system would deliver but more cost effectively and in a mix of on line and off line stand alone wire free formats. The aim was to create a keyless campus with a solution that could not only manage the large number of doors on campus now but also grow to handle their future requirements too.”
“A key part of the contract was that the chosen system had to be capable of integrating with the University’s own custom in-house software program which is essentially a facilities management system with an active directory. This incorporates all the information about the students and staff, and includes where they can go and when, timetables, other systems etc.
“So, working in consultation with [the university’s] ICT services facilities planner Jacques Wessels, we planned a highly secure and flexible access control solution that could not only be retro-fitted to most doors throughout campus but could also take the software integration requirement in its stride too.
“The XS4 solution we designed is made up of Mifare proximity controlled E9450 electronic escutcheons in both off line as well as wireless on line models, PB112S and PB112S-SV on line power supply boxes and WRM9001 and 9001FS wall readers.
“This is currently split 50/50 between on line and off line doors as the installation has started with high risk areas with high traffic volumes. Some of these doors consist of perimeter or main entrance doors so we are building towards going off line internally with some external doors being wireless on line. This means the ratio will therefore change quite rapidly.”
Getting to the “heart” of integration
Besides the door hardware, which Salto describes as the “heart of the system,” Salto’s Virtual Network (SVN) software has been designed to enable locks and key cards to be updated remotely and access profiles to be changed “rapidly”. It also eliminates the physical restrictions of more traditional stand alone electronic locks, Salto said, and has been seamlessly integrated with the in-house software “without compromising its ability to allow key cards and locks to be updated, restricted or deleted remotely”.
The ‘smart’ key cards, which are currently standard prox cards but due to be replaced by combo cards shortly, also serve as student and staff ID cards and have photo identification and cashless vending capabilities.
Jacques Wessels said: “Controlling access is extremely important for our University. Although our Salto installation is brand new, we’re impressed enough to have made a policy decision to use the system from now on. Integration between the two software systems was extremely straightforward and we’ve now got the ability to auto lock and unlock rooms, set user time zones and manage and update access rights at will with none of the problems we had with our previous system.”
