ID Cards

[sippo]

I have been asked to find a cost to produce our own ID cards in-house. I don't know where to start to be honest. How much does a piece of equipment cost that produces cards?

 

To me its the most pointless exercise/idea. We've never had any issue with unauthorised access before, so someone's 'thinking too much'.

 

Any advice would be appreciated!

[dgsmith]

There was a recent post here asking the same thing (by us).

 

We went with CPLTD for our Securit solution which came next morning! I agree there isn't much point but it seems like a compulsory option rather than voluntary.

[plexer]

It's all to do with ofsted and safeguarding students.

 

/me passes the hoops around, come on everybody jump through them

 

Ben

[sippo]

There was a recent post here asking the same thing (by us).

 

We went with CPLTD for our Securit solution which came next morning! I agree there isn't much point but it seems like a compulsory option rather than voluntary.

 

Any approximatage on cost?

[RTFM]

We use Securit World Ltd

 

You get a printer, software and then just need a webcam to take a photo.

 

It does a job.

[RinSewand]

You're looking at a smidge over £1000 (usually) for a decent hopper feed printer. did some research into this a while ago, but nothing came of it. Had an incredibly helpful bloke over from SecuritWorld to give us a demo - was suitably impressed (their software is damned good too) but sadly we never aparently bought one...

 

RwD

[AyatollahPies]

I installed one of these in a school yesterday.

 

Magicard Enduro Duo ID card printer with magstripe encoder (3633-0022) - AM Labels

 

It's called a Magicard Enduro.

 

The results were pretty impressive, even from a simple template created in Publisher.

 

Bit pricey mind you!

Edited February 10, 2010 by AyatollahPies
Spellink

[dgsmith]

Any approximatage on cost?

 

I'm sure Simon/Joe will give you a quote if you ask nicely We ordered a few extra things too (like extra cards) so paid a tad more but not really too much more. We got a Magicard Pronto machine.

 

Does the job for us, (the Securit one), however I wouldn't rely on the included software to design the card. I did something quick and dirty in paint.net which looks pretty good, then we imported that as a background.

[broc]

Early last week we produced 120+ Photo ID badges for all our staff, using an Evolis Dualys 3 Colour ID Card Printer, it was bought with Revolution ID software. Cost inc software was just under £1800 including blank badges, holders etc....

 

Pretty straight forward to use. It came with a Webcam.... we ignored this & used a digital camera to take staff photos & resized them with Paint. 1/2 day to install software & test printer & produce a template for ID badge & another 1/2 day to set up simple DB of names, agree job titles to go on badges etc. It took just under 2 days to get all 120 badges done including taking & resizing photos (most time was spent chasing round trying to find people).

 

Hardest part was tracking down the staff to take their pictures. To keep some staff happy we 'Photoshopped' a few

 

ps. I didn't know about it until it arrived.... something our HT & Bursar decided we needed....

Edited February 11, 2010 by broc

[Sylv3r]

Hardest part was tracking down the staff to take their pictures. To keep some staff happy we 'Photoshopped' a few

 

You did well to get all photos of staff done in 2 days.... ours seemed to take weeks!

[broc]

You did well to get all photos of staff done in 2 days.... ours seemed to take weeks!

 

It took a bit of doing, the webcam was a waste of money.... only a 2m USB cable & little or no image control beyond focussing so we used a couple of digital cameras instead.

 

Once I had persuaded the office staff taking the pictures to use the camera zoom to frame the image & not to stand 1m away from the subject & use the lens at its widest setting (creates almost fisheye image, big noses abound!) we were fine.

 

I think the fact that the school suddenly found out an OFSTED Inspector was paying a visit within 72 hours also focussed some minds too

[localzuk]

We introduced a system here for ID cards a couple of years ago. We bought a little printer (Magicard Tempo), and a copy of Payne Security's ID Pro software.

 

The software allows you to resize images during import. Creating the list of staff took about 10 minutes for the 120 we did at first, and importing the images took about 2 minutes per person.

 

We had the entire batch done in about half a day. Oh, and regarding taking the staff photos - we arranged to do it at the same time as the kids 'school photos' were being done, so had the images without any extra hassle.

[sonofsanta]

Does anyone use these to keep track of visitors to the school?

 

I'm thinking that a system that would keep the photo stored alongside the date and time of visit, name, car reg etc. would be very useful here. We already ask for photo ID and pass text ID badges out to visitors but having a facial image on file would a) discourage anyone shifty straight off the bat and b) be very useful for the police, should the worst happen.

 

I suppose a straightforward Excel file could be used but an integrated system would be best, given that reception staff will be using it - not to slight them in any way, but the easier I can make it for them the happier everyone will be, including me.

[Tcsltd]

Brother do a visitor badge & management software.....

 

http://www.brother.co.uk/display.cfm/id/151853