Proximity Card Readers
Proximity card readers are RF (Radio Frequency) devices, commonly issued to employees to permit access to a secured area by swiping or holding the card near a detector.
You can attach a proximity card reader to your workstations, then associate an employee's account to their card. Users can then sign into their VTScada account by simply swiping their card by a reader.
While a proximity card can be used for several purposes, this topic refers only to signing in to your VTScada account.
The instructions here will not help you to sign in to Windows or integrate physical security at your site with your VTScada application.
USB - connected devices are supported. Install and configure your device according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Set the property pcProxEnable to 1 so that VTScada can recognize the device.
After this property is set, VTScada will begin scanning all ports between those identified by the properties pcProxPortScanLow (3) and pcProxPortScanHigh (16), excluding those on which a modem has previously been detected. When the device is found, VTScada creates a connection to it.
Following this, all that remains is to associate each user's account with their card
Set an Alternate ID for a proximity card reader:
- Install a proximity card reader.
This is done outside VTScada. Follow the manufacturer's instructions. - Open the VTScada Application Configuration dialog, Edit Properties page.
- Set the application property, pcProxEnable to 1.
VTScada will scan for the device. - Close the Application Configuration dialog.
- Open the Accounts dialog and select the user.
- Swipe that user's proximity card through the card reader.
(Do not open the Alternate Identification dialog.)
You may want to sign out, then swipe the card again to verify that it will work to allow the user to sign in to their account.
Close the accounts dialog. From this point onwards, the user can sign in to their account by allowing the device to detect their card.
At the time of writing, only proximity card readers from RF Ideas that support serial port emulation are supported by VTScada.
Readers that use only keyboard emulation are not supported.
While an application can use both Windows Authentication and a proximity card reader, it is NOT possible to use both methods for a single account. An account that uses Windows Authentication cannot also sign in using a proximity card reader, and an account that uses a proximity card reader cannot sign in using Windows Authentication.
Proximity card readers cannot be used for thin-client connections. (VIC, MIC and Anywhere Client)
pcProxEnable - Application property setting to enable a proximity sensor.
