CS Building Internal Keyless Access
The CS Building is equipped with keyless locks to grant access to the upper floors (for those not issued a physical key to an office or lab in the building) or to the basement Co-location Facility (Room 002). These are often referred to by the name of the vendor: the Salto system. For access to the upper floors, contact TBD. For access to room 002, please refer the Co-location Facility page.
Using the Salto System
The locks respond to TigerCards that are properly encoded and have current credentials. Beginning in late 2012, all cards issued by the TigerCard Office are pre-encoded for use with the Salto system. If you have an older card, you may need to visit the TigerCard office to either have your card encoded (for more recent cards) or re-issued (for older cards). In some cases, we have learned that students may need to visit the housing office.
Once a card is encoded for the Salto system and the card number is entered into the central system for access to a particular location, you will need to present your TigerCard to a "Salto Hotspot" so that current credentials can be transmitted to your card. Any hotspot on campus will update all your credentials. For the convenience of members of the computer science department, there is a hotspot located on the first floor of the CS building on the wall near the south stairwell (the stairwell closer to the Mudd Library). It is a silver square about 4-inches on a side. Bring your TigerCard near the hotspot and wait for a beep and a green light. The credentials transmitted to your card will operate the locks in the CS building for 10 days. If the credentials expire, simply visit a hotspot again. Each time you visit a hotspot your CS building credentials are refreshed so that they are valid for 10 days from the time of your last visit to a hotspot.
For after-hours access to the upper floors via the elevator, bring your TigerCard near the reader in the elevator car and then press a button for the desired floor.
Note that the Salto system is not as sensitive as the Prox system used on the exterior doors. You are likely to need to take it out of a wallet. In addition, bringing your TigerCard too close to a reader (e.g., rubbing it against a reader) may not work. The recommended distance is about a finger-width.
Technical Details - for the curious
The system as deployed in the CS Building is an off-line system. The locks and the reader in the elevator are not connected back to the central system. The only connection back to the central system is via the hotspot. When you access a lock, credentials are transmitted to the lock (for access) and status information from the lock (e.g., battery status) is transmitted to your TigerCard. Each time you visit a hotspot, information about the locks you accessed is transmitted back to the central system. This information is used, for example, to dispatch a technician to replace a low battery in a given lock.
Specific information about lock access (who accessed a lock and when) is generally not available to anyone in the CS department. Such information must be requested through Public Safety.