td5roo

Hi all, I know it's a bit of a long shot, but if anyone has a decent working retransfer ID card printer they'd be happy to pass on (or sell cheaply) to a school in need, it would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if you have one, or have any leads. Even refurbished ones are a major stretch financially for us. Kent based but will pay for postage etc. Many thanks, Roo

It's double gates rather than separate ones so they close together and the idea (which I have perhaps explained poorly) is that they would be maglocked to each other. Inhibiting the drop bolt was a definite thought when I looked at how to do this. 100% appreciate the advice - just wanted to double check my potentially mad idea with the modus operandi of the maglock specifically.

Sorry - the right hand side gate would remain closed with a drop bolt so just the left hand side gate would actually open with the maglock - so the maglock is only to hold the left gate onto the right one, rather than both gates together, if that makes sense. I thought by making it work with only one opening gate and having the maglock and plate on either gate at the point they join would be more effective than doing it on the hinge side of the gate as you've got the whole gate as leverage that way - that also would complicate matters as we'd need to get power across to the opposite side of the path to fit the maglock to the left hand (first opening) gate rather than the right hand one. Both gates would only be open when the system was manually overridden at times when general access is allowed and both gates would be opened by hand. This may allow a little bit of play in the movement of the gates when together but would still be very difficult to force your way through I'd have thought? Obviously, we're not expecting to protect against things like vehicles smashing them, just unwanted pedestrian access when the site needs to secure.

Hi folks, Not the usual sort of hardware question here I imagine, but it's something I'm having to think about. We have a pedestrian double gate, quite big - the total opening is about 3.3m so you'd fit vehicles through it very comfortably - on our school site which we need to put some form of access control system in place for. We are confident in Ubiquiti in terms of the readers and control hubs etc and are planning on using that for all of our doors across the schools when we replace the ancient Kantech gear we have now, but the gates themselves are posing a bit of a conundrum. Because they are double gates, and so large, the more traditional mounting methods for mag locks (we want fail-safe rather than fail-secure) don't really work, so we would have to mount the mag locks vertically rather than horizontally. We are happy to have only one gate actually in use while the system is active (there will be times when the gates are manually fully open to allow parents in and out), so the right gate (which closes first) stays shut and the left gate (which closes second) is the one used to get in and out. This is helpful as the power will be supplied from the right side rather than the left, so the actual electromagnet can go on the right gate. My theory here is that things are fitted to the right hand gate with enough slack to allow everything to move nicely as that gate is manually opened and closed at the relevant times when the access control system isn't being used. I suppose my real question here though is regarding the maglock itself - based on this vague outline, do any of you have any recommendations for kit you know of or have used before that would be appropriate? Is there anything that should be stopping or discouraging me from using the general Ubiquiti maglocks (obviously the heavy duty one due to the weight of the gates) and just mounting them appropriately for the gates? We are very tight on budget so replacement of the gates or anything like that is pretty much off the cards here altogether, so I am trying to deliver something that works well enough without dumping a pile of cash we don't have into it. Any feedback or suggestions on my rambles would be much appreciated. Cheers, Roo

For anyone who does manage to end up with an issue while the warranty is still valid, we have found ViewSonic warranty/RMA to be excellent. We had a total device replacement after a screen died completely and they were quite quick to get it all sorted, and as the -3 version of the display was no longer available, we had a new -5 instead. Sod's law of course as you folks say it happens just after the warranty expires.....

Perfect, thanks - hopefully this will ensure nobody misses out!

OK, thanks - just because the form requires that you answer that question, and there isn't an option for not being a member of any of them!

Do schools have to be a member of NAHT, nasen or PiXL to be eligible?

Could you ping me the deets as well, please? There's a serious difference between what we're paying and what you're paying, and you're getting Smoothwall the same as we are, and we don't get VOIP mobiles et al either..... I'd be very interested to compare notes!

Hi all, Using Windows Server 2016 Standard on our DC, and I am looking to move DHCP control over to our new Dream Machine Pro Max when that gets installed. Obviously, lots of stuff needs to have static IP addresses, like copiers, access control devices, boiler/heating controllers, etc. I've tried exporting our list of reservations from Microsoft DHCP but there's no MAC addresses in there at all. Is there a way to get an export that includes MAC addresses? Many thanks in advance. Sorry for the edits, I was lacking in brain function.

Hi all, So the time has come - we've got the UDMPM and it's hopefully going in during the Easter break. The added complications are that we still have a DC, and an upstream router from our broadband provider. This is going to be fun.

Currently we use Netsweeper which is provided by our broadband supplier.

We're doing UniFi for everything, switches, APs, cameras, the whole lot, deliberately, so will do that - that makes good sense. Thanks!

Jesus, that's a lot. We're looking at maybe 20-30 APs max, ~10 switches, ~10 cameras (and controller/recorder), ~40 phones, and eventually our external doors/gates.

All noted, thanks folks, we'll be collating everything before we do any work. Davit2005 - with regards to creating separate networks, do you say this with any particular reasoning, or just if we want to? AlphamaleZed - thank you. That makes sense, but it's a lot of VLANs! BKGarry - 1. routing the internet through it 2. Not at present 3. Not at the same time, no, they will follow as it's being done piecemeal - so the gateway will go in first, switches will follow, and APs finally - then we will repeat at the other school site (we share a network as they are on the same premises, they are connected via point to point) using what we have learned from the process of actually doing it. Cheers, Rupert

Hi all, So the big project for us at the moment is our network refresh. It's proabably a good 2-3+ years too late and we are having to do everything internally because the money for any kind of outsourced help simply does not exist - even next financial year. Becuase we are stretched for people as well - it's just me full time and my manager (who isn't even employed for anything IT related, he just happens to have the relevant knowledge and experience to be able to manage me and works with me on the bigger stuff, decisions etc), we are having to do this piecemeal, so we have discussed with some UniFi-experienced folks and planned accordingly. Bearing in mind neither one of us has done anything of this scale bfeore...! Step 1 is the installation of the gateway, for which we have chosen the Dream Machine Pro Max, so that all the other UniFi stuff can talk to it properly. Now, I've been told about using the default VLAN exclusively for UniFi devices and setting up another, separate VLAN for all other devices. We have a UniFi UPS that we will be running it off as we were warned that these gateways that run DBs can become corrupted if they don't have adequate time to shut down properly - not the kind of thing anyone wants to find when they get to work first thing on a Monday morning...! Aside from this, is there anything obvious I should know before going ahead with this? Talk to me as if I know nothing, if you like - honestly I'd rather be told the same thing 100 times if it means there's something else that doesn't get missed. It also doesn't help that when we get things that are very straightforward we keep asking each other "Is it really that easy? Surely not!"..... Cheers, Rupert

Read my final paragraph and weep - I have been in Discos for 5 or so years now and have a serious love/hate relationship with them! I'm on my 3rd one now but have owned this one for almost 2 years and done a huge amount of work to it myself with more to come, although nowadays I find myself with less time (and the odd health issue) so some of the absolute biggest jobs I pay Mark at Green Oval to do. Head swap coming up....! It's a weapon though, great fun, done thousands and thousands of miles and would do them all again. I've also recently nominated myself for staff governor at work so that shows you how much of a glutton for punishment I really am...

Hi all, Rupert's the name, most things are the game, but not necessarily played very well! I am an ICT Technician and Communications Officer for a pair of federated primary schools (which, fortunately, are on the same site!) in Kent with a total of around 850-900 ish students - we are four form entry. Pretty varied background, 7 years on the railway where I went from lowly part-timer on bottom grade in a ticket office to the youngest top grade clerk in the company. Worked briefly for a large secondary school in a MAT for a while several years ago before dabbling with car insurance, CNC programming and stores before winding up at the best place I've ever worked! We are regular customers of ICT Direct so nice to see them repping on here! In the last few weeks I finished our digital strategy to take us through to 2030, and there's heaps to do, the majority of which is playing catch-up following years of underfunding by previous leadership. Luckily our leadership nowadays is pretty interested in tech (although first to admit they are not tech savvy - just aware it's extremely important and needs to be taken seriously!) and are willing to work with me, but the funding is always tight, so we have had to make some interesting decisions! Mainly including the entire network infrastructure refresh being undertaken completely within house - i.e. myself and a colleague whose official job is nothing to do with ICT whatsoeover, but oversees the bigger picture alongside me. So that will be fun. Fortunately, the vast majority of the cabling is intact and of reasonable age and quality so will not need wholesale replacement, just a few bits here and there for things that are being moved, but even so, it's something neither one of us has done before! I will quite happily share whatever knowledge or opinions etc I can but don't be surprised if you find me asking how to achieve something ludicrous or daft in the name of lack of funds or time etc... When I'm not being a techy geek I have a penchant for owning stupid cars, so although I daily a lovely, comfortable, reliable Skoda, my "toy" is a 2003 Land Rover Discovery 2 with the TD5 engine, hence my username - I love those engines... when they work... a feeling I often have with things at work, too. 😂 Cheers, Roo

Champion, thank you. Never even heard of Looker Studio before, so I suppose I had best crawl out from under my rock and start looking - or Lookering! Much obliged, I will report back with progress... or lack of! 😂

If we were staying on MS, I would be really interested in GLPI by the sound of it!

Hi all, Hopefully this is the most suitable category for this one! I'm looking for recommendations as I am really struggling to work out something that will do what the overlords are looking for. We are bringing in reading surveys for our year 6 students each term, and have the first set done and data ready to go. The actual survey process is fine, it's the results we need to store and process and analyse etc, and this is where I am pondering. Basically they are answering questions that reflect their current situation/progress with reading. We want to be able to compare the answers from whole classes, the whole year group, or individual students, between terms or school years, easily. This pretty much rules out your typical Excel or Google Sheets type stuff as any such comparison would have to be manually prepared each time. There must be some sort of system or site out there that can achieve this sort of thing and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. We use Arbor, Insight etc, and are currently on Microsoft but migrating to Google this year so it definitely wants to be cloud/web based to survive that migration, although I'd assume any such service would be anyway. Hopefully I'm not missing any stupidly obvious things that are right in front of me - but any suggestions or recommendations on this front would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Rupert

I've never set up anything like Snipe-IT before but it was an absolute breeze on one of our on-prem Windows servers, really happy with how it's come out, so we are self-hosting. Obviously we are among the many who are moving away from on-prem, generally, but going down to 1 server it will be something we can keep going without the need to pay for hosting. If it's not expensive then the way Snipe-IT works is definitely worth it. It's made life much easier. I remembered it well from my work at another school that used it years ago, and it has only improved since, so it was a total no-brainer to go for it now.