Paxton Reader / Controller issue

[Sean]

We tend to use printed cards with our Paxton Net2 card readers for door access here but often visitors from our Academy Trust head office turn up with Paxton branded 'bullet' shaped fobs with a green band

One of the 3 new controllers we recently had installed on site just cannot 'see' these fobs at all, no red or green lights or beeping or anything, the door works fine with our regular cards and the fobs work fine on the 15 other doors we have on site!

They installed P75 readers this time when they have used P50s in the past but the other 2 P75 doors they did at the same time are both working fine with the fobs, as I say!

I can't understand what might be different about this one door / controller - does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

[Aprice]

Do you know if they use Net2 or switch2 at their site? could be that they are using the standalone products rather than Net2. Not sure if the fobs are fully forward compatible with Net2.

[Sean]

See, yes, when I Googled it did look like the green banded fobs like these were Switch2 while proper Net2 ones were blue banded but, as I say, the green banded ones work with 15 other doors across our site

It's a daisy-chained door, plugged into another door near by rather than being directly connected to the network but I found that 3 other doors the fobs work fine with are daisy chained too...

[Ex-MGSTech]

Are all the controllers on the same firmware?

[Chris_Cook]

Can you check the part numbers on the back of the card readers?

 

It sounds like the printed cards are Mifare or similar, and the fobs might be Prox.

 

Some readers can be activated with a special card from Paxton so that they work with other types of tokens.

 

It might be worth going back to the installer. Its always worth having the discussion with the installer about the types of fobs/cards in use before buying the readers.

 

The P50 and P75 refer to the width of the reader (in milimeters). The different card formats are available in all sizes as far as I'm aware.

[DGardiner]

Some readers can be activated with a special card from Paxton so that they work with other types of tokens.

 

 

yoooo, what is this!

id love mine to just read our mifare cards, our entry panels do but not all of the readers!

[Aprice]

yoooo, what is this!

id love mine to just read our mifare cards, our entry panels do but not all of the readers!

 

There's two variants of the readers, unfortunately it's not just an activation card for MiFare. Swapping the readers is fairly easy though. We fit the MiFare as standard for customers, it's then their choice whether they use Paxton or the hugely cheaper MiFare cards.

 

Believe it's HID that the activation card is for

[DGardiner]

There's two variants of the readers, unfortunately it's not just an activation card for MiFare. Swapping the readers is fairly easy though. We fit the MiFare as standard for customers, it's then their choice whether they use Paxton or the hugely cheaper MiFare cards.

 

Believe it's HID that the activation card is for

 

so it is the case that if it can read mifare it already would be? Not seen anywhere to toggle a mode or anything so im assuming they just work from the get go and dont require any specific config.

[Sean]

Solved!

The fitting company were in quoting for yet more doors today and they had a look for us - turned out that the card readers on either side of the door were too close to each other and their fields were interfering with each other - why on Earth it was only affecting fobs being read and not cards is a total mystery but they moved one of the readers up the wall and the other one down and now fobs are being read all OK!