How Key Fobs Work? | FobToronto

How key fobs work: by using authorized numbers for each of the tenants, security team, board members, cleaners, etc. With different access for rooms, amenities, employee-only sectors. As an example, your security department team might have access to certain areas, and higher authority & access than other members. For example: tenants using passive RFID tags or active RFID tags.

Furthermore, tenants of the building have access to certain floors for their respective units using a security fob key. The more secure the building security system is, the more the access is segregated and specific to each tenant (i.e. they can’t access floor 9, if they live on floor 7).

Everyone in the building can access the main doors at the lobby using RFID technology (since the lobby is a basic area), as well as the elevator to access any floor since that’s considered a ‘lower’ level of access. The fob has antennas embedded in the hardware on both ends that allow readers like in the elevator or entrance doors to detect the authorized fob code, which is assigned by management to enable the access requested.

This allows security fob keys to allow only residents to access their units.

Key fobs have a unique identifier based on their manufacturer. Each type or manufacturer uses its own encoding method making it digitally different from fobs in that building and other buildings, despite being supplied by the same manufacturer. In addition the security office authorizes codes for their building. One large use case is in supply chain management for encoding UIDs for different product lines, and for distribution using RFID tag products. Another would be for mobile device management to track which devices have been given to employees for better device tracking and inventory management. 

RFID Fob key readings depend on the numerical digits and the read range which usually from our experience is between 1 to 2 inches from the rfid reader. This is based on a standard RFID chip to obtain the correct frequency identification using the hexadecimal based radio frequency identification waves emitting from the fob. 

Types of digits have conversions from Bits (or binary digits) > Hex (or hexadecimals) > ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).

These numbers above are based on the type of fob such as HID (or Indala), AWID, Paradox, GProx, Pyramid, Mifare & more and differ in how each contain the data.

RFID technology involves an active RFID fob code is made up of values, based on hexadecimal formatted data authorized by management RFID systems with encrypted tags used by the manufacturer.

The most common form of storing data is the hexadecimal system, by using 16 character types such as the letters A-F and numbers 0-9.

Each hexadecimal character represents a string of four bits and below is the same string of 96-bits above, represented in hex.

Both of the lines below mean the same thing in hexadecimal format:

Exhibit A

0100  1111 0100 0010 0010 0010 0111 0101 0011 0011 0100 1000 0011 0101 0100 0010 0011 1111

Exhibit B

4        F        4        2        2        2        7        5        3        3        4        8        3        5        4       2      3       F

How the key fobs work is with a User Identification (UID) and the Facility Code (FC) issued by the building management for the key fob. This grants access for you as a tenant, security member, or master access member, by using passive RFID tags working with RFID readers installed in the building for each accessible area. 

Source: RFID INSIDER

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Further reading on how fobs work from an RFID perspective

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