In this article:
The Basics of Offline Doors
Unlike online locks, the offline or battery-powered locks have no direct communication with the SALTO server. They primarily communicate by putting bits of information on regular fobs. The information gets transferred as a fob touches offline locks, such as suite doors, and online readers, such as entry doors. As a result the information may take a while to make its way from the server to an offline door, and from a door back to the server.
SALTO PPD (Portable Programming Device) and Encoder
To help with the information flow a SALTO PPD is required. This is a small device (shown below) that can help with updating the locks, and communicating their status back to the server. It can also assist with opening doors that are fully out of battery.
The PPD can communicate with an offline door when it touches the door reader. The PPD can communicate with the server when it is placed on a SALTO encoder (shown below). This device is typically kept in your building's Communications or Electrical room.
Emergency Opening a Suite Door
The PPD allows staff to open an unresponsive lock, even if the lock battery is fully drained. In such cases you will want to follow these steps:
Load the door in question onto the PPD. Make sure your PPD is powered on, and place it on the SALTO Encoder, aligning the wireless icons on both devices. 1CONNECT Portal's notification page and Building Doors page will show a list of doors and allow you to select any of them for loading.
Once the PPD is loaded, take the PPD along with the black 3-prong cable adapter provided with the PPD to the door. Insert the cable into the reader to provide power to the lock. An Emergency Opening option can be selected on the PPD for this door.
Replacing Batteries in an Offline Lock
This process can be initiated by clicking a button on a Low Battery banner in 1CONNECT Portal. It can also be accessed by clicking the "Manage offline doors" button in the Building Doors menu.
First, the door information needs to be loaded onto the PPD. Make sure your PPD is powered on, and place it on the SALTO Encoder, perfectly aligning the wireless icons on both devices.
1CONNECT Portal shows a list of doors, and allows to select any of them. Usually the doors with low or critical battery levels are the right ones to select here. A PPD has a limited capacity, so it's possible to see more doors here than what a PPD can hold. In that case a subset of doors can be chosen, and the rest can be dealt with next time.
Once the door information is loaded, the PPD should be physically taken to those doors. Once a door is opened and batteries replaced, a lock should be "re-initialized" using the PPD, to make sure it gets the latest settings and permissions.
To reinitialize, use the up and down arrows on the PPD to find the "Initialize Lock" selection in the menu. Press the OK button to view the locks loaded on to the PPD.
Find the suite in the list by using the up and down arrows on the PPD. Once you find the suite for the door you are standing in front of, place the PPD against the lock, perfectly aligning the wireless icon on the PPD with the lock and press OK to initialize the lock.
The PPD will make a noise and show a loading screen. Do not move the PPD from the lock until it is complete.
The screen will indicate that the lock has been initialized when the process is complete. Test the lock to ensure it is working correctly.
When all of the locks that have had their batteries replaced have been re-initialized, the PPD needs to be synchronized with the server using an encoder once again (by placing it on top of the encoder and aligning the wireless icons). This is the way to communicate to the SALTO server that the batteries have been replaced in the locks. Completing this step makes the low battery alerts disappear from 1CONNECT Portal.
Note that this step can be skipped. If it is skipped, the SALTO server will not know about the new battery level of the locks right away, however this information can be communicated from the offline door to the server by touching a fob to the offline door reader and then to an online SALTO wall reader (e.g. at the main door).
For issues or a service visit regarding your SALTO hardware, please reach out to your local security integrator (i.e. your SALTO access control installer). For any other questions please contact 1VALET Support at support@1valet.com.