 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Welcome, welcome to Unhinge. Today we do have a very special guest, Mr. Chris Wilson. Okay, you ready for the next one? Let's go, interesting. So we've got a reader on the door so they've electrified hinge to reader across board. Okay, all right, creativity. Not the traditional install methodology, but okay. Yeah, a little different, right? Different, there you go. It also bothers me that the reader is offset. Like I don't know where I would have put this because it doesn't line up with anything but it's just very haphazardly placed, it seems. Yeah, like reader goes here. Yeah, pin the tail on the donkey and the door is locked. So presumably it is locked and you just use your credential to get in, okay? And that appears to be exit trim on there. So I'm guessing this is probably like an electrical room or maybe even like an IT closet or something like that. Potentially there's some sensitive information or access to their infrastructure in there. Rightfully so, you'd want it locked and secure. Yeah, it's interesting because it looks like you're on like a platform, like a loading dock or a stairwell or something outside. Like with the railing there, there's clearly a drop off, right, so there's some sort of a platform. I was initially thinking stairwell exit but you're right with the trim, I'm not sure that's it. I guess it, well, no, because then you would want the exit device to be the other way for the path of egress if this was a stairwell, right? Well, inside the door could be the stairwell and this could be coming out on another platform with potentially stairs. Right, you're on the outside of that and then another set of stairs going down outside the building. And they're just keeping it locked 24-7 for access rights, like only people that have authorized credential to go through there. If it's an egress door, then it should have some sort of a rating and cross boring in the field is probably not, although it's hollow probably, so you may be okay with that. Those readers, I don't know how familiar you are with, but it's more if it's a fire door, which if it is a stairway exit, it probably is. The reader is larger than an inch and that's the parameter around what you can modify from a fire rated door. So I don't know, I've actually never installed one of those readers, so I'm not sure what the footprint looks like, but I'm assuming it's more than an inch diameter to get that box in there. Well, it could be just surface mounted, so it could be just a hole for the wire, but then there's a splice inside the door and then two or four screw holes to be mounted, but I still think it's gonna be too much to modify. Typically you would drill a three quarter inch hole for your wire, but then four holes for your screws, so it would probably be too much. And then there's some sort of a modification because that looks almost like a full length hinge, sort of a modification on the heel side for wire transfer. Yeah, how are they getting power to this door? Well, and I'm guessing they did this also because probably they ran power through the door for the trim, either electrified trim or latch retraction. They didn't have to get around the frame on the other side, so I get it, I think it could have probably been installed a little bit cleaner with the reader placement. Yeah, I just don't know if I've seen one of those HID Prox readers on the door itself. I thought it stood out a little bit. The thing is, is like, if they tried to center it above the trim, it's too wide to have centered, right? So then it's automatically, like even if you make the edge side of the door like flush, right with the trim plate that's there, it's gonna be not centered. So sometimes it's like you purposefully make it not centered because if you tried to make it centered, the reader would extend past the plate towards the center of the door. And I guess we don't know what's outside there, but if this does need ADA compliance, the reader's too high, that's for access to that. So let's assume that you could have moved it down beside the hand or the trim or use a mullion narrower reader and put it centered over the top if it's not an accessible door. It's killing me to know what the hinge, what the wire transfer, what the power transfer setup is on this. It's gotta be... Wired continuous hinges. Like... I mean, they do make electrified continuous hinges, but my guess is this was an afterthought, right? Like this definitely factory-made, right? So I'm guessing they modified the hinge in some way or another, or they replaced it when they installed the reader. Well, yeah, you got at least four, probably six conductors for the reader and two for power. And depending on what crash bar that is, it could be fairly power-heavy. And so I'd be shocked if the original hinge had enough power, enough wires in the right gauge to support all of that. Yeah, because as an older reader, so when they electrified, it was probably not a motorized worm drive. So it wasn't energy efficient. It was probably solenoid driven. So yeah, that you bring up a good point. Like, I don't know if there was enough space to get that much draw through there. Also, I don't know if you know, I might be wrong, but I believe I'm right. That reader isn't capable of reading high frequency or more secure credentials, right? So my guess is they are on a standard prox or maybe even like an indola or something like that, that is not very secure and easily cloneable. That's almost easier to clone than a magstripe because the magstripe, you actually need to swipe the card to read this. Do you could have a long range RF reader from 20 feet away and still pick up their credential? So that's another security concern. Like, hey, this door is locked for a reason, but yet you have a credential that's not secure. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's a good call. You're exactly right. It looks like the HID Prox, the double game version, which yeah, it was 125. So they're due for an upgrade. I don't have access to it right now, but my $20 Amazon cloner could easily copy that credential. So if I can clone it, that's a problem. Cause I'm not like a hacker or anything like that. I'm just a dork, you know? Yep, $20 off of Amazon. You can do some interesting things. So it's making me so curious to know like what kind of an environment is this, right? What's on the outside? What else is there? Just curious to know. You want to do the entire security walkthrough. You want to like, why, why did you do this? Yeah, sign me up for an assessment of this facility. Let's go. I thought it was interesting. It's almost like an integrated lock set, but old school. Like the reader and the electrified hardware is all there, but it's not connected. It's a little different. Exactly. Yeah. It's the original DIY electrified lock set. I don't see any door position switch on that door either. Oh yeah. Good call. And I would expect if you've run all your other electrification around that trim and the reader that they would have put the door position there, which means best case they've got a Rex in the crash bar, but there's no door position. So you'd be getting door forced alarms. So that could be a problem as well. Or they're not even monitoring it. Maybe it's just access. That's a fail right there. Good eye. That's where the door position switch would have been. I don't know. They could have like a sensor on the other half. Yeah. It's possible. They still chose to put it in the top of the door. We just can't see it, but I would think from a convenience of install factor, it would have been right there on that leading edge and you would have seen it. Okay. Not too knocking bad, but I thought it was a little unique and would love your insight on that, Chris. So thank you. If you were to give it a knocking score. There's an aesthetic factor here. Does it function? Yes. I'm going to say this is a six for me because it bothers me aesthetically pretty bad and I'm worried about the wiring and things like that. So I'm going to go with a six Mia. I feel like there are a lot of questions that we still have. I'm going to go with a four because there could be lots wrong, but there could be not much more wrong than just the aesthetic and we don't know. I guess, yeah. If they modified a fire rated door, that's not good. The eight compliance, the lack of security, like this potentially could be a 10, but we don't know that for sure. We can assume all we want, but you know what they say about assume, right? I'm with you, Chris and Mia. I'll split the difference. I think it's like a five. With more information, we probably could give it a higher score. I know John Polly with his, I mean, I'm the same way. Like what's up with that reader? That's going to be twitching his eye. Talk about like OCD was a big topic during our last episode. So yeah, I tell everybody, if you're doing it, it's all have a tape measure and a level. Like just make it look pretty. Like, and it's the reader part. That's the part that everybody sees every time they use it. Come on, let's get this lined up and make it look better. It makes a difference on the user experience. It really does. Like if you scan into a Jankity, a SKU reader every day, your mentality is not the same as you're walking through that door as if it was a nice clean install. User experience is seamless where you're not even really thinking about it, right? Like those are the best doors or the doors that you don't have to think about. Yeah, I think that's exactly it, right? It's the perception of the user experience. It's what they feel as they go through it and there's so much that we can do and look at it at a crooked reader or it's too high or what have you then, it's a problem. There's a better way to do it. Which honestly, I don't know where I would have put that reader. I probably would have done it right and done it on the left side of the door. I know it's concrete, it's brick. That's hard to get conduit and wire through, but... Yeah, I think if it were me and I was going to put it on the door, I'm not opposed to having it on the door. I actually think it's great because you've got the credential and the handle. They're close to each other, like from a convenience factor. To me, it would have been just to the right of the trim, beside it, down to a lower height that's a little more convenient. You also got to think like when somebody goes to grab the handle, they don't hit their fingers on the reader. Like think about those things, but I think beside would have been the placement. I'm not opposed to having it on the door. I actually think it's a creative way to do it. Assuming they did it correctly, but I would have placed it a little differently. My question with having it on the door though is how fast is it unlocking, right? Because it's so close. You're going to hit it and then you're going to go to pull it. Is it unlocking fast enough? Or are you pulling while it's still unlocking phase? Exactly, yeah. Depending on where the relay is on the control board, is it right there at the door on the inside? Or is it 150 feet down the hallway that has to get triggered? There's a delay there. That's a good point. If it's solenoid, it's going to be a little delayed as well because it needs to build up the power to release it. Yep. So many questions. So little answers. Like always, right? Like always. Okay. You're going to go through and like at the end go, okay, and here's all the things that we actually know. Like there's a cheat sheet somewhere. There's an answer guide, but no, it doesn't happen that way. This is real life, right? This is what, if you walked up to this door on a consulting job, you got to work with what you got, right? Yep. Enquiring my mono. If you want to be featured on a future episode of Unhanched or if you have a picture to submit, you can email me at Mia at doorhardwarenerds.com.