What Happens When Visitors Or Deliveries Come To Your Electric Gates?
Electric gates are great but they’re even better when you control access through your gates. Motors open and close electric gates at the touch of a button without you having to push or pull them open or closed yourself. Stay in your car while it’s raining and let them do the work for you without getting wet. But what happens when visitors or deliveries arrive at the closed gates. How do they tell you that they are there? How do people that you are happy to let through operate the gates themselves without the key fobs that you use? That’s when you need gate access control systems.
Identifying anyone who you are happy to open the gates for and keeping them shut when you don’t want someone else to come onto your property all falls under the subject of access control. Here’s our guide to access control so you know how you can easily identify and let the right people in and keep undesirables out.
Gate Access Control Keypads
At its simplest, a gate access control system can include a keypad mounted outside the gates. You can give anyone who you want to give total access to a code which they enter into the keypad to operate the gates. Most keypads allow you to create a number of codes so your family or friends can have their own, or you simply give everyone the same code.
Fob and card readers work in a similar way but there is no numerical keypad. Instead, each approved visitor touches their own plastic coded card or key fob onto a card reader mounted outside the gates to gain access.
Intercom Gate Access Control Systems
Assuming that you will have more visitors than the handful you are happy to give their own access control to, how do you vet and allow these visitors in? This is where intercom systems are very useful. An intercom system uses a call unit mounted outside the gates and a receiver unit inside the house. Modern GSM gate access control systems even allow you to use your mobile phone as the receiver unit.
When a visitor arrives the gates, they press a button on the call unit that calls the house receiver. You answer and speak to the visitor via the microphones and speakers built into the system. You can even have video intercoms that allow you to see your visitor as well as talk to them.
If you decide you want to let them in, you press a gate release button on the receiver or you phone app and the gates open.
Intercoms rely on communication between the call unit, receiver and the gate control system. For short distances where the gate is near the house, wired intercoms provide good communication. If you don’t want to have extra cables laid underground from your house to the gate or the gate is a long way from the house, wireless communicating intercoms are available. These can talk to each other via radio, Wi-Fi or GSM (mobile phone) signals depending on the choice of system.
In some cases, you might be out when a visitor or delivery arrives but still want to control who gets in. You could have a tradesman entrance option or set the gates to open for anyone while you’re out, but that defeats the object of having them for security.
Modern GSM systems, where your phone is the receiver unit, can be operated from anywhere in the world where you have a mobile signal or Wi-Fi access on your phone. You could be at work, at a restaurant or on holiday in the Maldives but still know when someone is at your gates asking to be let in.
If you are looking into electric gates, access control should be on your list of things to think about. And if you have existing electric gates but need to upgrade your access control, we can update, service or install anything you need. Contact us now for friendly support and advice.
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