The “ISS Light” for 100% Amplitude Supervision of Magstripe Cards

As a card personaliser, you are responsible for ensuring that functional cards are delivered to your customers. Quality control will be carried out during manufacture using card readers while random cards are selected for detailed analysis. But, do all cards satisfy the specified standards?

Aftholderberg, Germany, October 2011 – Rinas continues to make progress in its quest for inline testing of magstripe cards to achieve 100% quality assurance. We want to present you with a new tool that will increase the quality to your customers and enrich you with that all-important competitive edge.

 

As a customer, you define the minimum and maximum amplitude values, and the “ISS Light” then checks the cards against your requirements. In doing so, the target amplitudes defined for the manufactured cards can be adjusted to suit their proposed use.

 

Calibration is carried out using a “teach-in” mode, which can be administered by the customer. This is necessary to compensate the test system for the effects of head wear and head replacement. An added bonus of this being that the effective operational life of the read head is further enhanced.

 

The enabling technology, which is based on home grown electronics and firmware, permits the testing of all three HICO and LOCO tracks even at high operational speeds. Parameterization is performed via the built-in serial interface or via the unit into which the ISS Light is installed.

 

The ISS Light can be used as a replacement for existing F2F decoder units with Data and Strobe output signals. Other coding schemes, apart from F2F, can also be read by the intelligence within the ISS Light. For compatibility and communication with other systems, the ISS Light is fitted with additional USB and CAN interfaces.

---