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Unattended Equipment Loan System?
captnitro asks: "I run a small media lab for a department at a large public university. We have about 120 faculty and and equal number of graduate students who from time to time need things like digital cameras, video equipment, projectors, EyeOne units, and so on. (While there is a central location on campus for students, faculty and staff to get some of this equipment, we stock a few specialized pieces that our faculty need.) Since I'm out of the office a lot, I'm looking for a clever way of loaning out equipment that doesn't involve me being there and is secure enough that our administrators deem it "theft resistant" enough to implement. I've looked into small safes with PINs, or card readers (all faculty have IDs with magstripes), blah blah blah, but most of these are prohibitively expensive, so I'm thinking of hacking something together myself.. though I have no idea how I'd do that. Any thoughts?" Solutions could range from the clever and mixed tech (cheap locked boxes with combinations sent through encrypted e-mail), through high tech (use of the existing ID cards system) to unlock delivery boxes. If you were going to set up a system like this, how would you do it?
[quote] You are loaning out things that people can pick up and walk away with. How are you going to stop theft..?[/quote] That's just silly. You stop theft by knowing exactly who took the gear. Most thieves prefer not to leave their identity.
Did you read what he was asking at all?
He wants to have the equipment available to people who have authenticated themselves.
If the people abuse it after that, it's a seperate problem.
By your theory, we should secure our boxes by delting all the accounts, since if you have an account a bad person might log in and do something bad to our box!
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I have to disagree. There are psychological ways of stopping theft that are probably more effective than technical ways (or at least complementary to them). Anyone determined enough can find a way around technical safeguards... your goal should be to make them stand out like a purple cow!
-I think the best is simply putting whatever solution you have in a highly visible area, like in a commons area. It's rare that you see a car broken into right in front of the entrance to a store, where everyone can see it.
-Lock it up at the end of the night, by putting a cage around it.
-Put a sign up, "This automated rental system generously donated by (whomever gave you a few bucks to implement this)".
-Have a loud alarm that sounds if it is broken into.
-Put up a camera inside, and have one in a separate location facing the person so everyone who uses it can be identified. Or at least a sign saying "This machine under electronic surveillance".
The key here is not to making it technically impossible to steal something, but to strongly discourage it. And to make it more likely to identify someone who does manage to break into it. You know those signs around military areas that say "Use of deadly force authorized"? Do you really think they put them up because they intend to shoot to kill everyone who wanders in there? Absolutely not. Psychology is a very powerful tool- use it however you can.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Sounds like you could use an internal website with a calendar to schedule loan times. In fact, I was looking into such a system for my department. Unfortunately, google is inundated with non-open source (read: non-free) software. But if you find one that suits you (or develop a site yourself) you could advertise the "office hours" when you will be there for equipment pickup and allow people to login and sign up for equipment in available time slots. That way, you have a digital record of who has what AND it's automatically logged and blocked off so others can work their schedule around it without involving you (that's the most important part). Make it a policy that if they haven't logged their loan request in the system, then they can't take the equipment. If you have the site developed well enough, then with this policy you minimize ID fraud since the criminal not only has to have the right personal ID card, but the would have to know the login and password for the appointment system.
I realize that I haven't given a suggestion on how to NOT be there in person when lending the equipment out, but I'm in line with the other suggestions that you should hire an underling to do it if you can't do it--that's most cost effective.
In my university, the IDs are now smartcards. Assuming that you also have this system, you could possibly use a smartcard reader for access to a secure room (ask the facility staff to do this). A smartcard reader on a PC with a barcode reader (to scan a barcode on the equipment, you do use barcodes for inventory management don't you?) could possibly be used to log the actually equipment transaction without you being there, but that's still insecure and takes staff training, yuck.
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