Swipe card
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A swipe card is a (typically) credit card sized badge incorporating a magnetic stripe, an RFID tag, a transponder device and/or a microchip mostly used for business premises access control or electronic payment. Swipe cards in their strict sense need to be swiped through some kind of detector device, but the term swipe card also applies to proximity badges, which only need to be moved close to a sensor to be detected.
Swipe cards have a magnetic strip, containing information coded on it during or after manufacturing. This magnetic strip is just like as a magnetic tape found on audio or video cassettes. It is made of plastic material with ferromagnetic coating on it. This ferromagnetic coating contains the information regarding the user.
Swipe cards are very good at secure places to prevent intruders or unauthorized access. Swipe card is coded with necessary information like - "username", "usernumber" or "ownernumber" and other information necessary for the acquaintance of a user.
Technically swipe card readers system are divided in to two parts
1] Reader - Which just read the magnatic tape on swipe card and after reading the information from the card send it to a controller system using some protocols like RS-232. The reader is an electronic device that contains a microcontroller to send information read from the card.
2] Controller system - The system collects the information from the reader and, after checking this information, decides to provide access to user. The controller system is an assembly of microcontrollers, some memory chips like EEPROM/Flash and some other electronic elements. One or more readers can be connected to a controller system. As the controller system receives information from the reader side using a database present in an EPROM chip microcontroller decides whether to grant permission to the card holder by executing a software program written in an EPROM or in chip memory.
