Good luck getting any information from
@StealthRT. I have read some of the threads to which he posted and noticed that most ended rather abruptly without any significant feedback from him. He is what I call a "drive by" poster, lingering only long enough to get whatever information he needs from us without informing the community of his results (if any). He then goes on to his next "project" a few weeks or a few months later. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that because, after all, we are here to help those who help themselves. I just sometimes wish the successful ones would come back and tell us how they did it, with or without our help.
I have a somewhat limited experience with electrically actuated locks, dating back to the 1980s when I was actively working with the intelligence and reconnaissance community. The entry doors to our facility used electrically actuated, commercial, dead-bolt latches, programmed with (IIRC) a set of four or five center-off, two-position, rocker switches that had to be pressed in the correct order for the mechanism to momentarily energize. Over the next twenty or so years I witnessed several ingenious schemes used to actuate the lock mechanisms while preserving the "security" of the system against un-authorized entry.
Later, I became the facility manager for a small club that initially issued physical door keys to current members whose dues were paid up. Keeping track of, and preventing unauthorized duplication, of those keys became a logistical nightmare. So, I recommended to our board of directors, of which I was just one voting member, that electronic latches be installed on the entrance doors. After several meetings and tedious discussions my suggestion was approved. This required no changes to the lock mechanism, just the installation of a striker plate with a solenoid release mechanism that allowed the door to be pulled open when actuated with a card key. Again, this was a standard commercial, off-the-shelf, system.
The doors were then re-keyed by the locksmith who installed the new striker plates so that none of the previously issued keys would open the doors, but a limited set of the new keys would. This worked fine initially, and AFAIK it still does. But it has the same deficiency as the original setup: unless strict control of the new keys is enforced, unauthorized duplication of those keys compromises the security of the building. I left my elected position as a member of the board of directors when my term expired, deciding not to pursue election to another position. The politics involved in getting anything done was simply too frustrating! And it seemed that every single board member had a "need" to be issued one of the "master" keys that by-passed the electronic locking mechanism.
Another locking mechanism that is quite effective in an institutional setting is the electromagnetic locking plate that prevents a door from opening until the electromagnetic field is de-energized. Not much current is required to maintain the magnetic field, which is applied across a fairly large area, and no moving parts are required. It has the "advantage" that the locks may de-energize to allow the doors to open when power fails, or during an emergency evacuation situation, such as a fire. I have seen these extensively used in hospitals to control admission to restricted areas.
