Resort Room Lock Magic Band Touchpoints

[Raineman]

Just curious-these touchpoint locks must run off of batteries as a power supply-does mousekeeping change the batteries on a regular basis? Has anyone ever tried to unlock their door, but the battery was dead? It's something most people probably don't think about, but, here I am

 

[Master Yoda]

I don't know about the locks Disney uses specifically, but every RFID lock I have seen runs on batteries. Typically something as simple as standard AA or AAA.

The typical battery life I have seen for most commercial models is around 15k cycles which would have the batteries lasting around 4-5 years.

The select few I have messed with have a low battery indicator on them like smoke detectors do. A blinking red lights means replace the batteries.

 

[ThatMouse]

It is an ordinary battery, I forget if it was a AA or AAA. An IT person had to open ours to reset it. In addition to RFID and unlocking, it needs to call home periodically for the room key numbers (aka Magic Band) presumably over WiFi and TCP/IP, although it could be any radio signal. I'm assuming that when the battery is low it can call home and say so, or just blink a light, but I don't know who changes it.

In our case, our Magic Bands were not unlocking the door, despite 2 days of cast members telling us it's fixed, try it again. The IT guy plugged his computer into it and just reloaded the firmware, and that did the trick. Pretty bad bug when you have to do that. The IT guy did not go into any detail whatsoever and barely spoke english, or maybe it was his 100th door that day.

 

[tigger731]

This happened to me but with a key card back in 2006. CM came out tried her card, that didn't work so had to go get a battery.

 

[JIMINYCR]

I'd think that with mousekeeping servicing the rooms they would get an indication that the lock was malfunctioning due to the battery being drained.