HID Decoding

Due to the variation in encoding formats allowed by HID, the USB card reader must be configured to return card information in a standard format. You configure the card decoding parameters on the accounting server and these settings are relayed to your USB card reader.

Equitrac can support a mixed HID card environment (e.g. different card configurations with different facility codes read by the same USB card reader), and a mixed device and card reader environment (e.g. Equitrac and non-Equitrac card readers decoding the same ID value from the card). In order to accomplish this, you can create different HID profiles (referred to as "Decoding groups") to determine how a specific card reader decodes the HID card data.

To configure how the USB card reader decodes the ID and Facility codes, do the following:

  1. Ensure that your card type format is supported, and that you know the details of how your HID cards are encoded with your facility and ID information.
  2. In System Configuration, select Global Configuration Settings > Security and Authentication > User Authentication > Card Setup.
  3. In the HID Decodings Groups section, click Add.
  4. In the HID Decoding Groups dialog box, enter an HID decoding group name, and click Add.
  5. Select and expand the group from the list, and then click Add from the Decoding Groups Settings section.
  6. In the HID Decoding dialog box, enter the following:
    In the case where you do not need to extract facility code information, select ID code only. If you need to extract both Facility code and ID code, select both options.
    1. In the Facility code Start field, enter the position in the raw bit-stream (0 based, left to right, inclusive) where the Facility code begins.
    2. In the Facility code End field, enter the position in the raw bit-stream (0 based, left to right, inclusive) where the facility code ends.
    3. In the Facility code Width field, enter the number of decimal digits for the facility portion of the value that the USB card reader outputs. Numbers are zero-padded on the left as needed.
    4. In the ID code Start field, enter the position in the raw bit-stream (0 based, left to right, inclusive) where the ID code begins.
    5. In the ID code End field, enter the position in the raw bit-stream (0 based, left to right, inclusive) where the ID code ends.
    6. In the ID code Width field, enter the number of decimal digits for the ID code portion of the value that the USB card reader outputs. Numbers are zero-padded on the left as needed. The USB card reader returns a single value for each card swipe that is the decoded facility code followed by the decoded ID.
    7. Enter a Matching Facility Code if you want the card reader to locate the same facility code on different HID formatted cards.
    8. Select the Include Facility Code in PIN option if the facility code is part of the user PIN.
    9. Click Add.
  7. Repeat this procedure for any additional decoding groups you want to define for you environment.
  8. If more than one group is defined, the first group in the list will be used as the default decoding by the embedded device. If you want to change the default, select a group from the list and click Make default.
  9. Click Save when finished adding decoding groups.