Access Control Doors

Access control doors use the same machine access and induction portal system to control physical access to a tool via an NFC enabled door.

The doors closely follow the behaviour of the normal relay / power supply based access control boxes.

The control panel of the door is shown below with the key features labelled.

When the door is in a “ready” state the red status LED will appear to “breath” getting brighter then dimmer over a couple of seconds. If the box was off it will take 10 seconds after it has been turned on before the LED will start to show.

To unlock the door hold your key-card or fob over the NFC logo on the right hand side of the control panel. Do not touch any other part of the door while unlocking. Do not pull on the door while unlocking.

The door will then contact the server and check if you have passed the required inductions to use the tool.

If you are not inducted on the tool, or there was an error the status LED will flash three times. Occasionally a corrupt or invalid value is read from the NFC, take your card / fob away for five seconds and retry.

If the error persists, try the following:

• Check your induction status on the induction portal
• If the induction portal is unresponsive or doesn't behave as you expect contact the committee on the forum
• Check the status of the tool on https://status.bristolhackspace.org/ this will show a red box with an error message when a login is rejected.
  • If the tool status is INITIALISING or OFFLINE it has likely lost it's network connection - try turning it off and on again.
  • If there is a “MAIN - ACCESS” error double check your induction status, if this is valid it is likely that the door has been configured as the wrong machine. Contact the committee on the forum (this can usually be rectified remotely).
  • If there is a “PN532” error push the logout button and wait 5 seconds before retrying. Even if this fixes your issue please contact the committee on the forum. The NFC reader will likely fail completely soon.
• Turn it off and on again

If the door is able to validate your induction status you will likely hear the mechanism unlock. When the door is ready to be opened the orange unlocked indicator will light up. Do not try to open the door until the indicator is lit. The red status LED will also turn off.

Use the door handle to carefully open the door. Take particular care not to hit or otherwise stress the acrylic window, it is the most expensive component in the whole system.

While the door is open the orange unlocked indicator will flash.

In general the door should be left closed but unlocked while you use the tool, this means the tool will be shown as in-use on the status page.

Carefully place the tool and any other items remove from the box back inside the box. Close the door gently, make sure not to stress the acrylic. If the door doesn't appear to close completely check the frame to ensure nothing is trapped and try again.

The flashing orange unlocked indicator should stop flashing when the door is closed correctly. If it doesn't stop flashing, push gently on the door handle until the door closes properly.

To lock the door push firmly on the “Logout” button until the orange unlocked indicator turns off.