Oak Brook Club Resident Mail Alert
We previously wrote a blog article “Oak Brook Club Alerts Residents of Mail at Barrier Gates” about a challenge presented to ECI at the Oak Brook Club in Oak Brook, Illinois. There were two barrier gates installed which were each operated manually. One was for residents, the other for visitors. Both would have to be manually raised and lowered for larger vehicles.
An old broken relay system would previously alert a guard at the booth near the resident entrance that mail was available. The guard would have to flag down a resident upon arrival to let them know there was mail for them to pick up.
The challenge was to automate part of the process and provide a better system to alert residents of their mail. The solution involved several segments and included:
- Residents’ cars were equipped with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) transponders.
- When a valid transponder is detected by an AVI (Automatic Vehicle Identification) reader, the barrier gate opens to allow access. (The AVI reader is at the top of the pole near the middle of the above image.)
- A new vehicle loop detector senses when the vehicle clears the barrier gate and relays the controller to automatically lower the barrier gate. Manual closing was eliminated.
- An interlock device was installed so if one barrier gate is in the up position the other will not raise until the first is lowered.
- The guard manually use switches to open both barrier gates when a larger vehicle needed access. When the vehicle clears the barrier gates the guard will lower the guest gate manually while the loop relays to lower the resident gate automatically.
- If the guard identifies a resident in the computer database having mail a sign reading mail (as shown in the image above) flashes when the system identifies the corresponding transponder.
The AVI reader and RFID Tags were supplied by Transcore and Rosslare Security supplied the access control system. The Mail sign is by Signaltech.
Learn more about “Vehicle Access Control Systems“. Call ECI at 847.949.0134 or click below for contact information.
