What it can do — HID Amico Biometric Reader
Feature by feature, as assessed on 2026-09-08. Read the limitation column before you
promise a customer something the hardware cannot do.
Connection, health and audit
| Feature |
Supported |
Limitation |
| Connection & session |
Partially |
How long the reader keeps a login valid is not documented, so a session that the reader has quietly ended may not be noticed until the next scheduled check. |
| Liveness / keepalive |
Yes |
— |
| Time synchronization |
Yes |
— |
| Offline audit recovery |
Partially |
Events that happened before this system was first connected are never imported, and a very long outage can lose the oldest events because the reader overwrites its own log. A card or face added or removed on the device itself, outside this system, is currently not recorded anywhere. |
| Health & supervision |
Partially |
The reader reports no power, battery or temperature condition at all, so a failing power supply is invisible until the device stops answering. |
| Configuration & reset audit |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
Changes an engineer makes on the device itself, and a factory reset, do not appear in the system's history. |
| Configuration discovery |
Yes |
— |
Access control
| Feature |
Supported |
Limitation |
| Credential management |
Partially |
Only cards, personal PIN codes and QR codes reach the device. Face templates, licence plates and passwords are not synchronized, and a PIN attached to one specific card is not transferred. A credential added or removed on the device itself is not reported back — see the offline-audit-recovery row. |
| Card formats |
Partially |
Card numbers are sent to the device exactly as this system holds them. A device that rebuilds the number from the card's wire format needs that conversion set up as a card format here first, and one shape - a facility code combined with a card number - cannot be expressed yet. |
| Sync mode |
Yes |
— |
| Reset & restore |
Partially |
Rows an installer created on the device before this system was connected are left alone rather than cleaned up, and the device's own nightly clean-up of expired people can put the two out of step until the next synchronization. |
| Double-sync safety |
Yes |
— |
| Schedules / time profiles |
Yes |
— |
| Access levels / groups |
Partially |
A door has to be linked to the device's own door definition before people can be granted access to it, and that link cannot be read back reliably until it is confirmed on real hardware. |
| Holidays |
Partially |
Holidays are marked on the device, but a schedule that should behave differently on a holiday cannot be transferred — the holiday simply blocks access instead. |
| Antipassback |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
The device can only stop the same person re-entering immediately; it cannot track which area someone is in or be reset from this system. |
| Door control |
Partially |
Doors can be released momentarily but not held open or locked shut. On the smaller model, emergency lockdown and evacuation are not available at all, and the emergency state shown in the interface is replaced by the device's own reading a few seconds later. |
| Reader mode / enable |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
The reader cannot be switched off or put into a different mode from this system, and if someone sets it to read credentials from the card itself, the people and cards sent from here have no effect. |
| Access events |
Partially |
Four kinds of access record the device produces are shown as unrecognized device events, and a denial does not say why it was refused; a door released from the device's own web page looks the same as one released from this system. |
| Enrollment |
Partially |
Cards and faces can be enrolled at the reader and both become credentials here; PINs and passwords cannot be enrolled this way. |
Intrusion detection
| Feature |
Supported |
Limitation |
| Arm / disarm |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
The device has no armed or disarmed state, so it cannot be armed from this system. |
| Bypass |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
An alarm input cannot be temporarily ignored from this system. |
| Alarm reset |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
An alarm can be silenced but not acknowledged or cleared, because the device does not keep a latched alarm condition. |
| Partitions / zones |
Partially |
Alarm inputs are shown individually; they cannot be grouped into areas, and the maximum number of them is an assumption until it is checked on the device. |
| Alarms / tampers / troubles / restores |
Partially |
Tamper and duress alarms are reported, but which of the two a given signal means has not yet been confirmed on real hardware — until it is, a panic alarm could be shown as a tamper. The device reports no equipment faults of any kind. If the same door is forced twice with no clear in between, the second time may not be recorded. |
| User-code management |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
A PIN cannot be marked as a duress code from this system; the device only reports afterwards that a duress code was used. |
| Entry / exit delay |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
The device has no entry or exit countdown to display. |
| Sounder / alarm control |
Partially |
The siren can be silenced, but the system cannot confirm it went quiet and keeps no record of who silenced it. |
Safety
| Feature |
Supported |
Limitation |
| Panic / duress / emergency |
Partially |
A panic card raises a duress alarm, but whether the device really distinguishes that from a tamper has not been confirmed on hardware yet. Emergency lockdown and evacuation are unavailable on the smaller model. |
| Feature |
Supported |
Limitation |
| Inputs |
Partially |
General-purpose inputs are read at intervals rather than reported instantly, so a short pulse can be missed entirely. |
| Outputs |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
Relays can only be used to release a door; they cannot be switched on or off as general-purpose outputs. |
| Output schedules |
No — the hardware cannot do it |
Outputs cannot be put on a time schedule. |