Cell phone charging lockers have recently added to Mortola Library.
These secure locations allow students to continue working, knowing that their phones are safely being charged.
The entire locker is made of a solid layer of steel at least one-eighth of an inch thick. With the added weight of an all steel body and steel locks, breaking into the lockers undetected will be impossible. The lockers’ manufacturer, Go Charge, is used by many corporations.
“Even the NFL is a client of Go Charge,” Associate University Librarian Steven Feyl said.
The new lockers have coded systems that the students create on their own and reuse to access their phones.
“In order to operate the lock you first press the C button,” Feyl said. “Then you type in the four digit code of your choice and press the key shaped button to lock in the code.”
When a code is locked in a red light will flash in the lower right side of the punch code pad. This symbolizes that the locker is locked.
These lockers are designed to charge a phone as fast as a charge from a wall outlet. After an hour or two, or when a student may want to leave the library the code can be punched in to retrieve the phone.
If the locker is reopened in order to check on the phone, the lock will have to be reset every time that the locker is opened the lock disengages and forgets the code, so that the next person can use the chargers.
If a student were to forget their password they would not need to worry about retrieving their phone.
“Only select personnel have an override key, if a student forgets their code,” library systems analyst Erik Jantzen said.
Even if the power goes out the students will still be able to retrieve their phones. The locks are battery operated and even if the battery were to die the override key has the power to open the locker.
The charging stations are designed to charge all different phone makes and models. Each of the ten lockers is capable of charging all android phones. The odd number lockers are also capable of charging older iPhones from the 4S down while the even number lockers are also capable of charging the iPhone 5 and newer iPhones.
In addition to charging phones, the bottom two lockers are also capable of charging tablets. Designed large enough to fit an entire backpack inside they are more than capable of housing the largest of tablets.
Along with being able to charge a wide variety of modern phones the charging stations have the ability to adapt to new port designs.
The new lockers have ports that are interchangeable, so if a new charging port came out for Android or the iPhone, the charging station would be able to remove an obsolete port and replace it with the new one.
For students looking to use these new charging ports they can be found behind the library help desk and in also in the commuter lounge. Mortola’s charging station is currently up and running and the one for the commuter lounge will be installed later this semester.