Clever Geek Handbook

The “cheapest” turnstile in Russia controlled from a smartphone





Do you know what the most common question I am asked when it comes to turnstiles? This question is said in different forms, but the meaning is always the same: How much does the cheapest turnstile cost?



And always, when I had to answer this question, I was directly sad as much as possible. Well, because the cheapest turnstile is always something extremely simple, often unsightly and not very convenient. Well, that is, there is almost nothing to tell.



About half a year ago, my world has changed and it looks like it will never be the same again. It all began as mundane as possible - our phone rang.



The guys called from the OMK57 factory and offered to test the turnstile under the new RusGate brand, controlled from a smartphone, with built-in Wi-Fi module, with the lowest price in Russia, and with a 2-year warranty.



As you know, we couldn’t refuse, even for the very reason that we are particularly interested in everything related to the use of smartphones in access control systems . Well, besides this, they figured that if the turnstile turns out to be junk - at least we’ll erase it properly. Spoiler - he wasn’t trash.



It was further revealed that OMK57 has specialized in metalworking since 2013. And even among other things, for some time OEM or some of the existing turnstile manufacturers. From their words, they took into account all the mistakes, improved the design, and now decided to conquer the turnstile market on their own.

The story is not new for the Russian market, at one time the Vozrozhdenie plant, also engaged in metalworking, has released the Oxgard turnstile brand that is quite noticeable at the moment.



First, let's take a close look at the turnstile itself, and then compare it with the closest pursuers. We will touch a little on the situation in the market in order to generally understand who you can deal with.



Turnstile tripod "RusGate" T3-NO-SF v.1





Price - 31 990 rubles



The RusGate T3-NO-SF v.1 turnstile uses normally-open locking mechanisms. This means that the turnstile is constantly in the open state and in the case of authorized passage, the mechanism is not activated.

The locking mechanism is only activated if an unauthorized passage is attempted, which greatly reduces the load on the locking mechanism, since most passes are authorized.



A damping device is also used, which ensures a silent operation of the mechanism, and the rotation sensors of the barrier arms record the fact and direction of passage.



Turnstile management can be carried out:





The first, and most important, is completeness. Typically, manufacturers do not include barrier arms in the kit and have to buy them separately. In this case, the anti-panic straps are included.



Contents of delivery





Turnstile housing



The case is made of 08PS 3-mm steel in the form of a closed monolithic structure that provides the necessary rigidity and protection from adverse environmental factors.



What I really want to note separately: large and bright LED indicators of operating modes, very well located in a prominent place. What a rarity for budget turnstiles.







For comparison, in the pictures you can see how the indicators are implemented on the most popular budget models of the Rostov-Don T9M1-02 and PERCo-T-5 turnstiles. In life, a person approaches the turnstile almost closely and after he has approached, puts the card to the reader, then he waits for the red prohibitory color to change to a green permitting passage. If the indicators are located on the side, a person can hardly see them clearly. Accordingly, at the checkpoints, you can often see some of the person hanging during the passage.



The blocking levels "anti-panic"



Included with the turnstile are 3 barrier bars “anti-panic”. That is, 3 “anti-panic” bars are already included in 31,990 rubles. The strips are made of aluminum alloy AD31 with surface anodizing from a pipe with a diameter of 32 mm.



The fact is that as early as 20 years ago, the first barrier plates produced by Russian manufacturers were "ordinary" i.e. tightly screwed to the flange. But the bars with “mechanical anti-panic” appeared later, and apparently it was rather a way to earn twice as much on practically the same cost bars.



For example:

- Three slats for the Rostov-Don turnstiles - 6 549 rubles

- Three anti-panic bars for Rostov-Don turnstiles - 13 694 rubles



RusGate, the first manufacturer of turnstiles in Russia which at the moment is equipped with “anti-panic” slats, all its turnstiles by default. No matter how ridiculous the word “everything” sounded in the context of the assortment of two models of turnstiles.



And for this they have a separate small respect, a big respect will be when they will be equipped with automatic anti-panic bars. Neither mechanical nor automatic “anti-panic” will allow achieving compliance with regulatory requirements for ensuring fire safety. To do this, you will need special fences . Here, the fact itself is rather important, the presence of a manufacturer who looks towards fire safety.



Turnstile control board







The turnstile control board is based on a fairly simple element base. At the heart of the microcontroller with RISC architecture is ATmega128 from the American manufacturer of microelectronics Microchip Technology . The board is equipped with two relays for connecting external devices, such as: gates, electromagnetic locks, sirens, etc.



The ESP-01 built-in Wi-Fi module based on the ESP8266 chip supports two Wi-Fi Direct (P2P) and Soft-AP operating modes on the board.



Turnstile control from a smartphone



But finally, the sweetest. Management and adjustment of the turnstile operating modes are possible using applications for smartphones on the android operating system. Which is most likely necessary and sufficient, since given that the real incomes of Russians have been falling for the fifth year in a row , iPhone for guards and security guards will appear soon. Applications have not yet been added to GooglePlay, and are available for download as a file with the apk extension.



Turnstile Remote Control Application



It is used exclusively as prescribed by the name, as a remote control. Download the application here . It works only on the android operating system.



With it, you can open the turnstile for a one-time or free passage in the desired direction, or block the passage, as well as control the relay.



To start working in the application, you must enter the IP address of the turnstile, if the turnstiles are in the general network, you need to see it in the router settings. The default IP address is 192.168.4.1



At first glance, the remote control on smart seems to be nothing more than a joke. But only at first. When installing walk-throughs, almost no one does any design, therefore, errors associated with improper installation of the turnstile from the side of the security window are quite common.



Yes, and to reduce the cost of estimates is always a hunt, so they are often installed incorrectly in order to save on the cost of laying the cable of the remote control.



Incorrect installation of the turnstile from the side of the security window



The turnstile is set so that any person going to the security window will completely block the passage. And security guards are often approached, for various reasons, the most common one is for issuing a guest pass.



Correct installation of the turnstile from the side opposite the guard window



Besides the fact that some people simply don’t think about it, there is, as I already wrote, a nuance of price. If you install the turnstile from the side opposite the guard window, in any case, additional work will be needed in order to stretch the wire of the turnstile control panel. Additional work can be different from shifting flooring or gating, to laying the cable in the cable channel along the wall to the guard. But they always are.



Now a free way to control the turnstile from a smartphone via Wi-Fi, this is at least minus one reason to set the turnstile incorrectly. And this is good!



Application "Card Master 04"



Used to configure and control turnstiles. For our turnstile sections "safety" and "indication" will be available. All options will be available for the standalone RusGate T3-NO-SF v.2 walk-through . with autonomous memory for 1,500 users and built-in RFID card readers.







In the “indication” section, you can individually adjust the color of the LED indicators of the arrows in the RGB palette both when opening and in the closed position. In the security section, set a password for access. Download the application here .



Compare prices for turnstiles



When comparing prices, we must not forget about the context. In this case, the context will be the situation on the Russian market and the situation on this market of a particular manufacturer. There are a lot of manufacturers, so I will divide them into three groups, based on the similarity of key parameters.



For the purity of the experiment, in comparison with prices, we will use prices from Yandex Market. Firstly, it is independent, and secondly, it is huge.



And most importantly, it is famous for its low prices. Since the strategy of price leadership, the only strategy in Yandex Market that leads to sales. The same strategy leads to an imminent death of the seller, as his margin tends to zero, faster than the Russian Avangard rocket is gaining speed 27 mach. And just as elephants before death themselves go to the “elephant cemetery”, so Russian companies go to Yandex Market before death. "Ave, Yandex Market, morituri te salutant."



Well, and in order to finally dot the “i”, I will once again say that our goal is to identify the cheapest turnstile, and not the most functional or the richest in terms of configuration and the like. Those. for comparison, I will take the cheapest turnstile from the line of each brand. It is clear that the turnstiles will be different, both in appearance and in characteristics, but in this article we will primarily compare prices.



European turnstile manufacturers



Everything is simple here, if you have a bunch of crazy dough, then you can quite afford to buy a turnstile at the price of LADA GRANTA, which, by the way, is not a bad idea.

And here it should be noted that the turnstiles of European brands are of course extremely reliable devices.

The problem is that the turnstile is an absolutely utilitarian product. And with the current exchange rate of Euro (EUR), products of European manufacturers are moving to the “luxury” category, which is an unusual category for turnstiles. Which does not negate the fact that highly motivated local players can "quite" effectively implement these "luxury" turnstiles. But it doesn’t smell like a budget category, and it’s almost not sold on the Yandex Market, except for the Came brand, which is budgetary by European standards.





Other manufacturers of turnstiles



Under the capacious word “others,” I have combined very different manufacturers of turnstiles - Chinese , Chinese OEM , Belarusian , Turkish and even turnstiles from sultry Brazil , where, as it turns out, there are a lot of not only wild monkeys, but also turnstiles.



They are united by only one, almost zero market share, and as for me, almost zero prospects change this share. And the reason is simple, the approach of our foreign partners, as our president likes to say, is a simple message, buy our beautiful turnstiles and sell them in your beautiful Russia. And over the course of all 20 years, this approach has led to very stable and practically zero results.



There is only one reason, distributors to whom turnstile manufacturers are trying their best, do not want to promote someone else’s brand, and they can be understood. Why manufacturers do not promote their brand in Russia is more difficult to understand. But we have what we have. And there are no prerequisites for changing this approach. I will not give a meaningless and gigantic list of all manufacturers. I will give only the brands with the lowest prices most represented on the Russian market.





Russian turnstile manufacturers



It would seem an ideal situation for Russian manufacturers, which historically have strong positions. The dollar (USD) and euro (EUR) rushed up, the average salary in China is much higher than in Russia . I do not want to produce. If necessary, put a comma yourself, after reading.



And the first thing that should be noted is that when you talk about Russian manufacturers of turnstiles, you should say - PERCo and everyone else.



PERCo from the very beginning of its existence has rigidly dominated the industry, according to company owner Alexander Krutov, occupying 85% of the Russian turnstile market. According to the old tradition of the owners, I think Alexander is exaggerating a little. But it is unlikely that there will be at least one expert who does not value his reputation so much as to claim that PERCo does not prevail in the Russian turnstile market.



In addition, PERCo, the only one who is pleased with the new products, let them mainly revolve around the low-budget implementation of existing foreign counterparts. And here it should be noted that the suck strategy is not embarrassing, some countries implementing this have become the first economy in the world in terms of GDP.



All other turnstile manufacturers in Russia followed an even simpler path. They simply present their turnstile and say take it cheaper and better than PERCo. Therefore, the strategy of most Russian manufacturers is simple, to make prices a little cheaper than PERCo, and to show them a little market on this simple formula. The strategy is also not ashamed because it is working and also simple.



Do you know how the strategy of “European” and “other” differs from the strategy of Russian manufacturers? Russians have a warehouse in Russia. And on this, not so hot how difficult it is to achieve an advantage, to win the battle for the market.



Trite? Let's ask a more complicated question. But before that, we recall that most Russian manufacturers are not Moscow. And now the question itself.



What do you think, how many turnstile manufacturers have their own warehouse in Moscow?

But, before answering it, for a second - Moscow accounts for 20% of Russia's GDP.



And only one manufacturer has its own warehouse in Moscow - this is PERCo. And this is in 2019, when the client wants everything at once.



And this is over 20 years of development (someone has less), when without exception, even very small, manufacturers managed to accumulate a lot of cache. At which it was quite possible to organize a representative office with a good warehouse in Moscow and a showroom (if not ashamed to show, of course).



But no one did it. Why?

In order to think about the need for a warehouse in Moscow, you don’t need to finish Yale, you don’t need to learn anything at all - you just need to be able to read, at least our blog, by the way, do not forget to subscribe.



You can learn everything except one - the ability to want. To want is not to dream. To want is to give up everything, go and do it.



Einstein also noted: the greatest stupidity is to do the same as others and hope for a different result.



But it’s difficult to open a representative office with a warehouse in Moscow, it’s costs, it’s control, personnel, etc. etc. This is all to the fact that it seems that one of the significant reasons for the dominance of PERCo in Russia is that nobody really tries to move them. Or now you can talk almost no one tried.



Now to the main thing! Who is currently banking in the segment of low-budget Russian turnstiles? The most interesting thing is that it seems that the low segment is now the main battlefield. Since in a stagnant economy, the demand for almost all categories of goods is shifting to the budget segment, although of course there are exceptions , unfortunately not from our industry.



Everyone understands this, for example, PERCo recently decided to lower prices for its budget model. But they stubbornly continue to fix prices in euros (EUR) despite the fact that the PERCo plant is in stable Pskov, and the eurozone is about to collapse from Russophobia tearing it from the inside. Apparently, they’re not watching Sunday Night with Vladimir Solovyov.





Final standings



  1. Turnstile-tripod "RusGate" T3-NO-SF v.1 - 31 990 rubles
  2. Smartec ST-TS100 tripod turnstile (China) - 36 569 rubles
  3. Turnstile tripod OXGARD Cube C-02 - 36 610 rubles
  4. Turnstile-tripod "OMA" 26.461.0B - 39 008 rubles
  5. Carddex GR01 STR-01 tripod turnstile - 36 007 ₽ + slats 5 150 ₽ = 41 157 rubles
  6. Turnstile tripod ZKTeco TS1000 PRO (China) - 44,255 rubles
  7. Turnstile tripod 3V Model L (Belarus) - 45 360 rubles
  8. Turnstile tripod "Rostov-Don" T8M1 - 39 420 ₽ + levels 6 549 ₽ = 45 969 rubles
  9. Turnstile tripod Siberian Arsenal SA-300 - 47,750 rubles
  10. Turnstile Tripod PERCo T-5 - 47 000 ₽ + trims 3 922 ₽ = 50 992 rubles
  11. Turnstile tripod "Came" stile one (Italy) - 86 725 rubles


What are the chances for the RusGate brand turnstiles market?



Well, in addition to burning eyes and a warm heart, guys with OMK57, you can put in a set off a couple of interesting strategies:



The first strategy : price leadership, the strategy is difficult to implement. But the profit can be huge: for a large number of buyers, price is a key criterion for choosing.



The second strategy : differentiation - the way in which manufacturers try to isolate their product from the total mass of similar products in order to attract the attention of buyers, the offer of goods with better characteristics than competitors.



And here, too, a victory, the first Wi-Fi turnstile - RusGate, the first turnstile with control from a smartphone - also RusGate. Not bad for a company that sells turnstiles for six months.



Well, a 2 year warranty, also a good thing, at least speaks of the seriousness of the approach, because only such a rather large guarantee can be held.



There are threats, of course: the price leadership strategy involves working at a minimum margin, and with a minimum margin it is difficult to develop new products: a step to the right, a step to the left - and there may not be enough speed. And without new products, full-fledged competition will be difficult.

And we live in Russia, the figures from Rosstat for 2015-2018 are stubborn things - almost 90% of companies and individual entrepreneurs are closing. Although, here, of course, we must not forget that OMK57 has existed since 2013, which in general inspires hope that there is experience in business.



And the very presence of at least two pronounced strategies compares favorably with OMK57 managers from most manufacturers on the Russian turnstile market.



Conclusion



And there is no conclusion, to the consumer all these "turnstile wars" are not interesting from the word at all. He needs a suitable product, preferably in one click from him. And there is such a product - a turnstile-tripod “RusGate” T3-NO-SF v.1, the first in Russia “Wi-Fi turnstile” controlled from a smartphone, the product is curious and shameful. In addition, at the lowest price in Russia.





Well, just in case, the turnstile is just one of the devices of the access control system, the choice of the rest of the equipment for access control systems and the design of the system are no less important, how to do this so as not to spare a lifetime a detailed guide in our blog.


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