 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. Today we're going to be having a conversation about Wi-Fi operators. I'm your host, Mia Merrill, and I'm joined today by Jay Vikas. Jay, please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jay Vikas. I'm director of business development for Norton and I'm happy to talk to you today about operators. It is my passion and my area of expertise within the company. Well, thank you for joining us. What unique features can we turn on and off? And what does that mean in each feature? So in the operator world, there's common features like opening speed, sweep speed, latch speed, opening force, power assisted force. Those are all adjustable using the SMERC device and the Wi-Fi, of course. And then there's latch locations and back check locations and hold open times. And those are all adjustable. But when you say the word unique, what's unique is mostly the inputs and the outputs are programmable. So there's a series of relays and you could teach them or select them using the device, your SMERC device, to be whatever you want. They could be an emergency interface relay. They could be a latching relay to signal an alarm panel. They could be an input relay from a card reader or a keypad or a push button. So it's the inputs and outputs that are very definable, which on normal circumstances are not. So it's like a programmable logic controller using a SMERC device. That's what's unique. But there's a lot of features that can be configured with the device. Okay. What happens when we put out a software update? How does that reach the operator? So another benefit, there's not a lot of operators out in the market that have the ability to upgrade the firmware. And this one does. You have two methods of doing it. The easiest one is obtaining the latest on your device and then going to the door and uploading it to the door. And that helps us with this planned obsolescence because as we make changes to the firmware at the factory at Norton, we could push those out to our preferred installers who then can go out and add that as a feature, maybe on their annual maintenance agreements to the customer. So physically Wi-Fi at the door location within 20 feet, new settings are uploaded. Oh, that's great. Does this allow us to do any diagnostics in the field on our operator? Yeah, so interesting too because that's not something that would be normally easy to obtain. Certainly some manufacturers have done it by reading LCD display screens, but this one gives you upon connection, it gives you the serial number, the firmware version, the hardware version, a cycle count, how many times unit has been turned on and off in all of the current settings that are in unit, the door opening time, the closing time, the door position, which is an advantage to have because you could just visually see that you're within compliance. And then also the power status, the temperature at the underneath the cover of it. And then also errors in any type of incident that occurred, maybe the door was forced closed or forced open up here in a code. So actually quite a few status reports available on one screen during connection. Interesting. Now, what if I'm programming a bunch of doors and I want them to all have the same settings? Do I have any benefit with this? Yeah, so it is common for a national account customer to want all of their doors to be configured exactly the same. That standardization, I want my sweep, my latch, my opening to be identical, no matter where I go and what building. And once you program one door, you could save those settings, go to the next door, and then simply upload these settings from a file on your smart device. So you could program multiple doors, all that individually, door A, B, C and D by making the wifi connection and uploading the settings, but you'll be assured that they're all exactly the same. So another benefit of the method of programming that we've engineered. That's great. So how does this make daily operations safer for everybody? In a number of ways. One is the standardization. Two, all settings have typically been subjective to the installer. The code is very specific with the opening forces and times, but it is difficult for a technician to have a force gauge and a stopwatch. So I think what we all would do is tend to make assumptions. And maybe that is eliminated. So now we know that the door force, the door speed, the door hold open times are all a standard. And remember, when you use the initial window, we do a auto tune or auto learn. So we automatically set the operator to be compliant automatically. Also, there are some cases I would add where you can have a door stay open longer or close faster and it is acceptable to the code, but there's some criteria that is the traffic must be trained or something, there's an exception. So if the installer makes that selection, we can open up a window that says something to the effect of do you know, do you agree that you're making a parameter setting outside of the code and here in the individual could say, I agree, okay, I understand. So for all those reasons, it's just an inherently, they were already safe platforms automatic doors to begin with, but it just makes a safe platform even safer. Yeah, that's great. All right, anything else you would like to share with us today? Yeah, I think when we talk about the terms revolutionary versus evolutionary, I think this is a combination of both because the concept of programming using a phone was somewhat revolutionary, but our approach to it was evolutionary. So in the earlier version, there was a potentiometer and an LCD display screen and then also the ability to program it using Wi-Fi. So it wasn't Wi-Fi exclusive, you could still program it the old method, but going forward, I think it will become revolutionary in that the most likely most other manufacturers will follow this lead and it'll probably become one of the only ways to program the unit and there'll be more functionality added as we advance and add other features and other safety methods that will just become the facto standard going forward. So I'm happy to see this in the portfolio and being expanded throughout it. Yeah, I mean, the convenience, the failure-proofing, you're automatically needing codes, like I can't imagine why there would be an expansion around this throughout the industry. I agree. Well, thank you for joining us today, Jay. We are so glad to spend a little bit of time with you. So thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Yeah, so below you will find links to the Norton Door Controls website where you'll be able to find all the information you need about what Jay and I talked about today. If you're interested in operators, but you don't know who to reach out to, I've also included a link to find your local DSS office. Please like this video and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for joining us.