Our community has a gate at the back entrance/exit to prevent thru traffic. We use a plastic card that’s the size of a credit card but with no magnetic stripe on the outside. You have to insert the correct end of the card into the slot in the card reader and give it a little ‘press’ for the gate to open. If you lose your card, you have to buy another one from the association for $25 but it’s not like they’re encoded with any personal info like an ATM card. What kind of technology is this using?
Is it a smart card?
Sounds like a contactless IC card… based on the way it’s used. Tho they could be cheap and it’s just a piece of plastic that jabs a switch at the back of the hole.
Contactless cards generally don’t require insertion into a slot. You just wave it in front of the induction-reader-thingy and it works.
When I was on the cruiseferry between Helsinki and Stockholm, the room keys were credit-card-sized (but thicker) plastic cards, with an arrangement of holes in them. Presumably there were contacts in the lock that connected in specific patterns through the holes.
The cards are slightly thicker than a credit card, with no holes like hotel door keys. Could it be RFID? Apparently there is some kind of switch at the back of the accepter that you have to push against in order for it to ‘read’ the card. Usually I have to try a couple of times and hit the switch just right for it to take. I tried a regular credit card in it just to see if it would work but it didn’t. There must be something magnetic or electronic inside the card that ‘communicates’ with the reader. Lately the readers are intermittently failing to work at all, or work with some cards but not others. We’ll probably have to replace them soon.
If it’s thicker than a regular credit card, RFID is a good bet.
That was my initial thought… but iirc RFID’s have readable distance measured in feet, and CIC’s in the inches.
Nah. My access badge at work is RFID and I need to place it within inches (centimeters even) of the access pads for it to register. The OPs card is the same except it also must toggle a physical switch.
Contactless IC cards like PayWave are still a type of RFID though. There are all sorts of RFID systems; some need to be right next to the reader; others can be metres away.
It might be something simple like a buried magnetic patch in the card that has to be next to a latch at the rear of the reader in order to release the gate.
There are very simple keycards that predate RFID by decades. They use embedded magnets or magnetic wires. The Wiegand keycard ones (scroll down) are popular.
Sounds like the same thing they use in motels.