[ale] RFID Systems

[Alex Carver]

A tiny SBC on the back-end is probably all you'll need to do live 
inventory.  Put a wireless card/dongle on it and set it up for AP mode 
to let any WiFi enabled smart phone, laptop or otherwise access it, no 
cell connection needed.  It also would give you persistent storage which 
you could save and transfer later to do things like determine what 
equipment is used (or not used) and how (in)frequently it gets used 
(useful for space management on the truck).

The best thing for inventory is to put RFID antennas on the inside and 
outside of the truck doors (one pair per access point to the gear).  As 
the equipment enters and leaves, you get tag information and direction 
(outside before inside, item going in; inside before outside, item going 
out).  That makes it idiot resistant and doesn't require any user to 
actively think about scanning/wanding/etc.  I was setting up a similar 
system for chemical inventory at a semiconductor research fab.  The 
chemical bottles were all tagged.  A bottle going into the chemical 
cabinet registered +1 inventory and a user pulling out a bottle 
registered a -1.

Some of the higher quality readers will report multiple tags at once 
which means a Pelican case full of individually tagged items can all be 
inventoried in one pass through the antennas.

On 5/21/2013 17:20, Doug Hall wrote:
> I'm researching the use of RFID tags for inventory control for a truck full
> of expensive video equipment. At the end of a project, our employees need
> to be able to do a quick inventory of all the equipment on the truck, and
> be able to quickly account for its contents. Ideally, the system could
> leverage an iPhone front end but be served by an open-source back end -
> perhaps a Rails application that I can write. They may not have internet
> access, though. Sometimes the truck is needed in locations without cellular
> access. So, if the application could work offline, that would be great.
> It's not mandatory, though. Perhaps all I need to do is learn how to do
> local storage in html5.
>
> Any advice or suggestions would be welcomed - especially if you have direct
> experience with RFID. I've written an inventory tracking system which uses
> bar codes, but for as many (sometimes small) items as they need to track on
> this truck, that would take too long. Also, it can be a separate and
> simpler system than what I've done.
>
> Thanks for the advice.
>
> Doug
>
>
>
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