Modern Access Control
Over recent decades, the role of access control systems in the enterprise has gradually shifted. If it previously was almost exclusively about protection from external threats, these days, access control primarily concerns itself with monitoring personnel and ensuring compliance.
For example, an enterprise may require the implementation of complex rules: This "door" is accessible to everyone, the second "door" -- to employees who have been properly "inducted" (and these inductions expire), entering the third "door" requires a supervisor to accompany all visitors, and so on.
Another domain trend -- and this is where the "industry leaders" struggle the most -- is the gradual fusion of access control with other facility management systems. No longer an "island" existing in isolation from the general facility management, access control is now expected to work in tandem with energy metering, lighting control, air quality monitoring, occupancy tracking, space use scheduling, and other systems.
With all this feature amalgamation happening, it is becoming difficult to discern "what is growing into what." Is this an access control system being enriched with facility management features, or is this the facility management system now also handling access control? It's hard to tell!
The "Big Boys" respond to these industry shifts by adding more and more options and software features to their standard hardware. This effort to "offer everything to everyone" leads to feature creep and bloatware.
There is a limit to how much can be achieved by adding endless configuration pages -- at some point, a product becomes just too complex to comprehend.
With the ever-increasing list of client's needs, it becomes evident that many installations require a tailored system containing precisely the elements the customer desires.
In the past, developing custom solutions has been prohibitively expensive, requiring hundreds or even thousands of hours of manual code writing.
AppBlocks' no-code application development to the rescue! With its ability to produce complete, functioning applications from simple flow diagrams drawn by users, AppBlocks makes the expensive custom system development affordable even for small-scale projects.
AppBlocks creates applications for Tibbo Project System (TPS) devices, a modular automation platform offering a wide variety of IO modules called Tibbits. TPS product line offers all necessary building blocks for creating flexible access control solutions.
To get you going, we have prepared a starter access control project containing all the conventional elements of a rudimentary access control system. Fitting in just 15 functional blocks, it is simple enough to be understood even by AppBlocks' beginners.
This project is part of our Tutorial -- a series of projects and lessons covering the majority of AppBlocks' features. Modify the project as you see fit, and mix it with other bits and pieces from the Tutorial -- all without leaving the browser.