Door control on the tablet you already have.

Put it next to the quote you were given.

Traditional access control prices by the door, because every door needs a reader, a controller and the cable between them. This prices by the device instead.

A tablet, a relay, and the door you already own.

A station at the door — a tablet on a bracket, a Windows machine with a webcam, an IP camera — verifies the face and checks whether that person is authorised for that door at that time. If they are, it sends a signal over MQTT, HTTP or Bluetooth to a relay, a controller or a smart lock, and the door or barrier opens. The lock itself does not change. The same event stamps attendance, so one verified entry produces both records instead of two systems that have to be reconciled later. An unverified second person following through raises a tailgating alert in the same event stream.

What it does not do: this is not a certified high-security access-control installation. For a facility that requires certified end-to-end access control to a specific standard, NCheck should sit alongside that system, not replace it.

Access control without new wiring: how the station opens the door.

Conventional access control is expensive because of the topology, not the technology. Each door needs a reader at the door, a controller somewhere central and a cable run between them, and in an occupied building that cable run is most of the invoice. Add a door later and you repeat the exercise.

Here the intelligence sits on the device at the door and the signal travels over the network you already have. The station talks standard protocols — MQTT, HTTP or Bluetooth — to relays, controllers and smart locks that are already in place. In practice the physical work is a relay near the lock and power for the tablet. Adding the seventh door costs a tablet and a licence rather than a second visit from an installer.

This also means the door is not dependent on a central panel being reachable. Authorisations are held locally, so a verified person still gets through when the link to the server is down — which on a conventional system is exactly when a controller refuses everyone.

What it does not do: it does not supply or fit the relay, the smart lock or the electrician. Tell us the lock or barrier you have and we will tell you plainly whether the station can drive it.

Rules per person, door and time.

Authorisation is a per-door list rather than a single site-wide yes or no. A production worker opens the staff entrance and the canteen; a lab technician also opens the lab; a contractor opens the gate between seven and five on the days they are booked, and nothing at the weekend. Schedules attach to those lists, so access follows the roster rather than requiring somebody to remember to revoke it.

Two-person rules are available where a door should never open for one individual alone — standard practice for cash rooms, precious-metal areas and some laboratories. Denied attempts are recorded rather than silently ignored, which turns the access log into something you can review for patterns rather than just a door opener.

Because the same identity drives attendance, there is one authorisation story per person rather than two. A leaver removed in the admin client stops opening doors and stops producing timesheet rows in the same action, which is the failure mode most access systems have: somebody leaves and their card still works for a month.

What it does not do: it will not model an arbitrarily complex approval workflow. The rules are per person, per door, per schedule — anything beyond that belongs in a dedicated access-control platform.

Attendance and access on one record.

The usual arrangement is two systems that disagree. Access control knows who opened which door; attendance knows who claimed which hours; and when the two conflict somebody spends an afternoon with two exports and a spreadsheet.

Here a verified entry is one event with two consequences: the door opens and the attendance record is stamped. The timesheet and the access log are the same data viewed differently, so they cannot drift. For a site where entry through the gate is the start of the shift, this removes the clock-in step entirely — walking in is clocking in.

It also means the live headcount is driven by the doors themselves, and that a barrier which enforces check-out keeps that headcount honest, which an honour-system clock-out never does.

What it does not do: if people routinely enter through a door with no station, attendance from doors will undercount them. The design assumes the controlled entrances are the real ones.

Three ways to control a door.

Who this is for — and who it is not.

What is biometric access control?

Biometric access control is the use of a physical characteristic — a face, a fingerprint, an iris — rather than a card or a code to decide whether a door should open. The security argument is that the credential cannot be lent, lost or copied in the way a badge can. The practical argument, which matters more to most buyers, is that it removes the administration around credentials: nothing to issue, nothing to recover, nothing to change for everybody when one person leaves. The decision still has to reach the lock, which is where relays, controllers and standard protocols come in — the biometric part identifies the person, and the existing door hardware does the opening.

What to check before you commit.

Before you ask us.

Keep reading.

Last reviewed: October 2026. Templates, not photos; deleted on request; on-premises keeps everything inside your network. Details on the security and compliance page.