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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Same reason a remote control is handy for a TV — convenience.
Motion or presence sensing. Timers. Virtual buttons. Physical buttons in places I wouldn’t normally have them. Garage door opening automagically when I pull in the driveway with a specific vehicle. Etc.
Plus I get to check in on my kitty from far away.
Well that's an expected answer. Many people seem to like such stuff and find it convenient. I just don't. Probably I'm too old to understand it lol. Though I have nothing against smart home devices that are not connected to the cloud. Just don't fully rely on them for core stuff such as doors, fire alarms and oxygen/medication (in case you need that). You do want to be able to open the doors with a physical key in case of a power outage or a simple system malfunction
My day job is IT support that is in part adjacent to healthcare, and I can tell you a lot of healthcare actually relies on widgets connected via wireless and WiFi. Not just the mobile terminals they bring around for your charts, but also active elements like insulin pumps, chemo injectors, phone/intercom/paging systems, panic buttons.... A lot of it runs over wireless infrastructure, WiFi and other technologies, and is handled by a central controller that might be on-prem, or might be in the cloud.
Its a rough day for everyone when the WiFi is down or the Internet is out down in the wards
The pagers scare me. Thankfully it seems they aren't used where I live at all anymore, but the classic POCSAG/FLEX pagers transfer the data in plaintext, and I've heard that doctors often use them for sensitive information as well. Meanwhile all you need for receiving and decoding POCSAG or FLEX is a $5 generic RTL-SDR and software like multimon-ng.
I meant broadcast paging over the intercom system like "Dr. Whomever please report to pre-op," but I agree the old beeper style pagers were a bit sketch
I am an alarm/automation/access control technician, and I have some bad news for you...
I would genuinely like to learn about how you deal with stuff like malfunctions and backup door unlock methods. But now I don't really want to discuss much because of health issues. Hopefully you all won't consider me a bad person who likes to argue
Usually, if a building has electronic access control, it's a requirement that the main controller or power supply be directly tied into the fire alarm with a hardwired trigger relay to drop power to all the door locks during an alarm. It may all be controllable and configurable on the cloud, but commercial equipment still has traditional redundancies like standby batteries and the like.
What if there's a gas explosion or another case that causes loss of connection between the system and the doors? Is it possible to open them manually in such cases?
If the door has no means of mechanical egress, for example, a maglock, then it is required to have a second form of egress that cuts power to the maglock, such as a normally-closed exit button. Maglocks naturally unlock when losing power. Electric strikes and locksets can be set up fail-safe or fail-secure.
Not the commenter you replied to, but these kinds of systems are usually "fail open": if there is unexpected loss of power (including the locking mechanism connection to the controller being interrupted), the door is released/unlocked, and can be opened manually by users.
Some more complex systems will have specific doors automatically shut in the event of a fire to try and keep it contained, depending on local regulations. These doors can still be manually re-opened, but they will not "catch" or latch open until the system fault is resolved
Edit: add clarity