2021/22 Season Tickets (now with poll)

It depends on what the purpose is. If it's just checking if something is valid you can actually do that on non-connected devices. Barcodes or QR codes are usually holding a hashed value, the device will unhash it and it knows what range and/or pattern it expects from the unhashed number so can tell its real. It's hard to fake because without knowing what is being used as the 'Salt' to create the hash even if you can break the hashing encryption method without knowing the salt being used to manipulate the value before it is hashed you get a completely different outcome and that then being a valid outcome is millions or even billions to one

However in general if you running such a system you are wanting to do more. You want to make sure that tickets aren't being used more than once (either passed back out of the venue in some way or simply fakes being made from a legit ticket) and other housekeeping so you want it to call back to a validation system. These devices obviously need a connection, they will have a hardwired base station (usually on its own isolated network) and then either use a private wifi network to handheld devices or using another RF frequency to communicate. The base station means the hand held devices don't have to communicate as far so are less prone to interference and you have them on their own network both for security and to prevent other uses causing lag or the system to be overloaded

Physical tickets are actually likely to be a thing of the past within the next 10 years. Some venues for events already use paperless systems where you use a QR code either sent to your email or within its own app and you can also check in on some airlines in the same way. And you can also do it with the same NFC technology that allows you to use your phone to pay at Starbucks . Covid is likely to see a greater demand from customers and staff at places to want systems that limit the passing of pieces of paper between people and that demand is just going to drive the cost of the systems down and as people get more used to them more and more places will want them

 

Several posts relating to a discussion on Coronavirus and unconnected with the sale of season tickets for the coming season have been moved to an existing Coronavirus thread. Here ...

https://bantamtalk.com/index.php?threads/corona-virus.3663/page-483#post-492097