Software

There’s two versions of Net2’s control software – ‘Lite’ or ‘Pro’ – Lite is free, whereas Pro requires an extra licence (roughly £400+VAT). We’re often asked, “what’s the difference?” and “is Pro really worth the extra cost?”. Some of the features, like the ability to manage the entire system from a mobile phone app are cool, but it’s a bit of a gimmick. However, in buildings that are occupied by multiple different companies who manage their own staff, and you want to alarm different areas of the building using Keyfobs, it allows you to do so much more.

Network

Historically, NET2 had its own network – you ran a cable from controller to controller to controller. These days, each controller has an ethernet port – so you can mix and match between the two. Our preference is to wire each NET2 unit separately into the network, unless there’s a good reason not to. This means that if one unit fails, the rest are not affected. And with Power Over Ethernet also available, if you’ve got UPS battery packs in your comms rooms, it means you don’t need to keep spending money on service calls out each year to change Paxton batteries.

BMS & Security Integrations

Want the heating, lighting and air conditioning to come on with the first employee coming in and off when the last one leaves? We’ve all seen PIR lights that are either on too long or keep going off! Used in this way, NET2 knows who is in the building, which office or floor they are in/on, which lights to keep on and which spaces to keep warm or cool.

Want your vending machine and door fobs to be the same device? Want pre-payment cashless accounts set up using Net2? Want to control which floors people can get to in the lift? Want the MD to come in, swipe his card and the lift magically turns into an express and goes straight to the top floor without stopping for anyone? Or in the event of a fire, automatically opens every door? Yeah, Paxton can do this and more.

You can also integrate NET2 with CCTV – allowing you to do things like use Automatic Number Plate reading for car park entry, seeing door events in realtime [I.e.: the actual person entering the door] and other cool things too!

User Management

Almost every organisation has some sort of database for managing people records. It could be an education management information system (like Capita SIMS), it could be Windows Server’s Active Directory. It could be a payroll system, or maybe just an Excel Spreadsheet. Or maybe a membership database for a sports club or gym. The last thing you need is another database to manage, more user records to keep updated and yet another step in offboarding and onboarding individuals into and out of the organisation. Imagine, John Brown starts in Accounts. You add them to one system, and the get the right access to not only email, document storage but also the physical building too during working hours. Paxton has over 60 ‘off the shelf’ integrations with other systems – like Active Directory or SIMS or school/gym locker systems.

Also, at the end of the day, Paxton has an open Software Development Kit (SDK). Even if there’s no current way of getting your systems talking to each other, that means we can help you design and build one. There’s really no end to the possibilities of what Paxton Access’ technology can do.