Access Control & Intercom Systems for Gates

Access control is the layer that decides who gets through an automatic gate and how.

Intercoms and video intercoms. Keypads. Card and fob readers. RFID readers and windshield tags. Free exit devices. Smart access and hands free entry. Remote access. Automatic doors.

Residential, commercial, HOA, and multifamily.

Brands include the LiftMaster CAPX line, with the CAPXS, CAPXM, and CAPXLV2 intercoms and the CAP2D two door controller, along with CellGate, 2N, AES OPYN, AWID readers, Sure-Fi wireless bridges, and more.

The call was a long range RFID reader that had stopped working.

On arrival the reader was not mounted and was not connected. It was sitting on a shelf in a storage room. Direct power did not turn it on, and the wiring around it suggested someone had tried to make it work and shorted the unit doing it.

The building's maintenance man said the access control company that used to service them could not find the cause and stopped working with the building.

A new reader went in, matched to the tags residents already carried, mounted above the parking area. The continuity test came back with nothing. So the run got traced, roughly 500 feet of it, and several places turned up where conductors were joined in ways that made no sense.

Each conductor inside the cable came apart and got tested individually, then went back together as a connection that would hold, with colors matched on both ends and along the run so nobody working there later hits the same problem.

The AWID reader went onto the access control unit, a tag opened the gate, and the building had its parking access back.

The tracing went into the price already quoted.

Distance is the first thing that moves a number. A short trench is a small line on a quote. Two hundred feet of trench is a different job, in labor and in materials.

That is also where wireless starts to compete. On a large property with several gates and access points, a wireless bridge that carries the signal between the reader and the controller can come in under the cost of a long trench. Those systems are not cheap. Neither is burying that much conduit.

After that it comes down to how many access points there are, since each gate and door is its own decision about credentials, wiring, and hardware, and to device choice, because prices vary widely across brands for equipment that solves the same problem.

Cloud based systems also carry a subscription. LiftMaster Smart Access products require a myQ Community plan, and CellGate runs one too. It is a small monthly cost, worth asking about before comparing two quotes.

A system nobody on site knows how to use turns into a phone call every time a resident moves out or a vendor changes.

Before we leave, the owner, property manager, or board member gets walked through adding and removing users, setting schedules, issuing codes, and reading the access log.

One recent job needed vendor access split by gate, each vendor holding his own code with access to one gate only.