Connect an IAdea room booking panel

An IAdea panel is an Android screen with an Ethernet port on the back, and it arrives knowing nothing about Offision. There is no vendor cloud to enrol it in and no second account to hold: you power it, you get the Offision player onto its screen, and you claim it with a six-character code.

The one decision worth making before you start is how the player gets onto the screen — as an installed Android app, or in the panel’s own browser. The built-in card reader is the app’s, which on these panels is most of the reason to buy them. That decision is Run the player as an app or in the browser.

What to have ready

• An IAdea panel. The certified models are the WRP-1000 and the XDS-1078-A9
• A switch port with 802.3at PoE+
• Network the panel can reach your Offision server from
• About twenty minutes

The card reader is the reason to buy one

Both panels read a staff card on their own face, bottom centre, with nothing plugged in and nothing on the wall beside them. What makes IAdea different from every other panel Offision supports is what comes back.

An IAdea panel decodes an HID Global card’s facility code and card number. Every other certified panel returns the card’s serial number instead — a different number, and not the one printed on the card. If your organisation already issues HID cards and holds their printed numbers, this is the panel that matches what you have.

Two things to settle at the order stage, because neither can be changed afterwards:

• The WRP-1000-A reads 13.56 MHz cards.
• The WRP-1000-H reads both 13.56 MHz and 125 kHz, and is the HID one. It is a separate part number; a panel on the wall cannot be upgraded to it.

Whichever you order, enrol one card and tap it before importing the rest. What a tapped card then does is in Check in by tapping a staff card, and the other ways somebody can identify at a panel are in How somebody proves who they are at the panel.

1. Power it and put it on the network

Mount the panel and take it back to a PoE+ port. It boots into Android.

Give it an address — DHCP over the Ethernet port is the normal answer, and the panel’s own settings are where a static one goes.

2. Get the player onto the screen

A new IAdea panel starts on its own setup: tap the screen while it shows the PAUSE mark, accept the first page, and work through Network and Scheduling for the address and the time zone. Then choose Set content and give it the player address:

That is the browser route, and it is the one the guideline in the wizard walks through. The other route is to install the Offision Android app on the panel instead, which is what makes the built-in reader — and its HID facility codes — work at all; see Run the player as an app or in the browser.

Either way the panel ends up showing a six-character pairing code, waiting to be claimed.

3. Add the panel in the console

Go to Devices › Booking panel › Devices and choose Add.

Pick Room booking panel, then the room this panel will show, then IAdea panels under Certified devices.

That one tile covers both certified models — WRP-1000 and XDS-1078 — and its Support models button links each of them to IAdea’s own page.

4. Claim it with the code

Choosing the tile opens IAdea’s own installation guideline beside a single field. Type the six characters showing on the panel; the field submits itself on the last one.

The rest of the wizard, and the pass code every new panel raises afterwards, are covered in Connect a booking panel to Offision — including why that pass code should be changed before the panel goes up.

5. Check it worked

Within a few seconds the panel stops showing the code and starts showing the room, and its row goes online within a minute.

Then prove it end to end, twice:

• Book the room for yourself and watch the panel change while you are standing at it, side lights included.
• Tap a card on the panel’s face and confirm the number Offision records matches the card. On an H model that number is the facility code and card number; if it is a long serial instead, the panel is reading through a USB reader or is not an H model.

When it goes wrong

What this does not do

• It does not manage the panel. Firmware, brightness, the network and the kiosk launcher stay in the panel’s own Android settings.
• It does not read a badge with the camera. The panel’s camera is what Face identification uses; nothing here scans a printed badge, and the QR method works the other way round — the panel shows the code and the person scans it. Both are in How somebody proves who they are at the panel.
• It does not decide what the panel can do. The brand tile chooses which installation guideline you are shown. What the panel is capable of comes from the hardware and from whether it is running the app — see Which booking panel hardware Offision supports.