EuP - No Fuss about Green Issues with FUSION from Borer!

January 2008
Publication: PFM Editorial

With seemingly no end in sight to high energy costs, many businesses and organisations are increasingly seeking ways of minimising their energy use and bills. Together with ever more stringent environmental regulations and concerns, manufacturers and service providers alike have to look again at their processes and products to see how they can make them more energy efficient and reduce their impact on the environment.

This philosophy is no stranger to the team at Borer Data Systems Ltd. The Berkshire-based access control and facilities information specialist has placed energy efficiency and environmental impact at the core of its design and manufacturing processes for many years.

The company's latest intelligent smart card reader forms part of its new FUSION range of security access control products. The FUSION range has been developed using a 'clean design' policy which ensures that all products are highly energy-efficient, have low impact on the environment during manufacture and also consume the minimum amount of materials.

The new EuP (Energy using Products) regulations came into effect in the UK in September 2007. These are designed to improve the environmental performance of products throughout their life cycles by introducing environmental aspects at a very early stage in the product design. Borer's products meet not only these requirements but also the RoHS (Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances) Directive and the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive.

Borer's FUSION range has involved environmental concerns from the very earliest planning stage.

These included:

• Reducing the quantity of raw materials by mass as well as the energy used in the manufacturing process by designing smaller and more compact products
• Reducing the amount of packaging required and the financial and environmental cost of shipping by making products smaller and lighter
• Minimising the complexity of systems and associated infrastructure (control panels, equipment boxes, cabling and mains power outlets) together with the associated installation time
• Reducing the amount of energy consumed by designing products which use the available energy more efficiently
• Minimising the number of post-installation service calls by providing remote monitoring and control tools which enable diagnostics and remedial maintenance tasks to be carried out over the web
• Restricting the volume of waste to dispose of at the end of the product's life cycle by using less raw materials in the manufacturing process and designing-in ease of disassembly to allow more of the product to be recycled.

But being environmentally and energy-efficiency aware has not led to any reduction in the power of the new intelligent smart card reader. Weighing just 90 grams, the reader is an all-in-one door card access control solution measuring 120 x 78 x 26mm. It provides full on-line and off-line card validation with decision making capabilities at the point of swipe, removing the need for a separate control panel, wall box or additional mains power supply at every door.

The Intelligent Smart Card Reader's secure internal database can hold 120,000 individual user profiles within a secure and tamper proof housing. This enables it to provide full off-line card-only or card-and-PIN validation at the door.

Borer's unique Go Green PowerWise technology enables all the equipment at the door to be powered over a single Cat5 Network cable. This is capable of delivering enough energy to power two card readers (IN and OUT) and a magnetic lock or heavy duty strike.  What’s more and uniquely the software monitors and manages power usage ensuring that the cabling can NEVER be over-loaded, eliminating the risks associated with this possibility.

The intelligent smart card reader connects to the FUSION access control database through an Ethernet Bridge and the site's existing Local Area Network (LAN). Both these innovations eliminate the need for extensive additional cabling.

A unique feature of the Borer’s Fusion access control system is that the power being delivered to each door over CAT5 cable is being constantly monitored and managed. The energy usage profile for each door is recorded and can be displayed graphically by the Fusion software. This information is very useful in detecting equipment problems at an early stage. This allows maintenance personnel to identify and deal with problems during routine maintenance visits, and before a problem becomes a fault requiring an engineer to be called out to repair it.

The result is a system that is not only easier to install and maintain but also uses less energy and reduces the volume equipment deployed. (Note current WEEE directive 2002/96/EC and the proposed EU battery directive will greatly increase costs associated with the disposal of used electronic equipment and batteries).

The reader can read Mifare and Desfire RF (radio frequency) identity cards, tags and key fobs. Mifare is an open standard technology (ISO 14443A) where a single card can be used for several applications including banking, travel card, cashless vending, access control and attendance recording.

In today's environment where the media is full of stories of lost personal information, the Borer intelligent smart card reader has another major advantage. Data is securely encrypted end-to-end from card to database meaning the system cannot be hacked. Borer's system is believed to be the only one which offers secure encryption downstream from the PC to the card reader, although others also offer encryption upstream of the PC.

Bob Chapman from Borer Data Systems says: “We believe the combination of energy efficient operation, low-impact installation and secure data storage makes our new intelligent smart card reader a highly valuable and versatile product to help facilities management teams meet the challenges of today's complex working environments.”