Review on UHPPOTE Fire Control Expansion Panel Board For Access Controller With Enhanced Alarm Output by Justin Trujillo

This is an update based on using this for some time. I've changed my rating to three stars instead of four, because the software is just absolutely horrendous with zero support. Currently, we're unable to get it to create any open/close reports at all. No matter what is selected, no activity shows in the report. You can see it in the log, but can't export it. We also can't open the DB file directly either, it has a password. So basically the actual control works just fine, reporting is totally useless. Oh, and every few months we get an error and have to reinstall the software.Original review:This is a very good controller. I'm comparing it to a couple of name-brand systems I'm familiar with, and it compares pretty well.Obviously, the hugest advantage is the price. This costs around 1/8th of the price of the cheapest two-door kits from major companies. And it's not just the cost of the system, but the name-brand kits force you to buy only their cards/fobs instead of industry-standard cards and fobs. They typically cost four times more, and limit your choices to whatever they make. For example, this is replacing a Securakey system that doesn't allow for any stick-on tags at all, and their cards cost over $2 each while I can get industry-standard ISO 14443 cards for 30 cents each.Setup was pretty easy. While the hardware documentation isn't great, it's clear enough to figure out the connections in a few minutes. I had the controller running and reading cards in about 15 minutes. The software installs easily. The documentation for the software is VERY bad, just awful, but luckily the software itself works just fine and is easy to figure out. Actually, it's more intuitive than the name-brand stuff I'm familiar with. There is also an "extended mode" with extra features that you can enable with the passcode "5678" that adds useful things like time-based access control. The software auto-discovers the device on the network and instantly configures it. Unlike most major systems that force you to pre-program them with a serial device.Cons. There is no internal battery backup. Not a big deal, as you have to provide backup for your maglocks anyway, so we put everything on a 1500va UPS. The board ships by itself without a case, so you can buy a simple plastic project box for it or pick up a standard wall-mount equipment box on Walmart for $27. That's what I did. Cheap solution. The software works, but the vendor says there will never be upgrades available for it. So there is some risk that future versions of Windows won't work with it. Not a big deal for us, as we run virtual machines and will just leave this running on a VM with Windows server 2008 forever.Overall I highly recommend this. Pair it up with any Wiegand-24 readers and any maglocks for a full system. I picked up a cheap wall-mount power supply here on Walmart to power this, and $20 card readers that work with Mifare/NFC cards which are dirt cheap. So my total system price for a couple of doors was about $400, where a comparable Securakey system puts you around $1300.