Tag Archives: RFID

Computers/Technology

Right On Cue

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One of the things that was discussed on my RFID course this week was the difference between the fiction of RFID and the fact. The course tutor also commented on how annoying he found some of the scare stories that periodically come out in the press. So today, right on cue, I come across this gem produced by the BBC.

The first problem is that it is somewhat confusing over how the technology works. Take for example the caption on the first picture – “RFID technology broadcasts information to electronic readersâ€? – giving images of your shopping broadcasting information out of the carrier bags as you walk along the street. Fundamentally that isn’t true – the chips only broadcast information if they have power, and that power comes from the radio wave produced by the reader, and is such low power that it can only read within a few metres at most, assuming that there is nothing that obstructs the signal.

They then go on to talk about the ability of the technology to track items, and talk to a representative from Metro Group. The reason they talk to them is thanks to the Future Store Initiative which includes a lot of interesting sequences showing how RFID tags could be used. The simple fact is that the majority of what is shown is total science fiction, and is impossible with the technology. The real question to ask is what Metro Group are doing with RFID now – the same with Wal-Mart in the US, another big leader. In both cases they are using it to track pallets of stock for shipping, not individual items. Nowhere near the impossible vision shown on the Future Store site.

The real highlight of the article for scare-mongering is the section quoting Vint Cerf where he expresses a concern about the chips being used for tracking, which is then combined with the statements from Metro over wanting to track food, and a statement from a former Australian Privacy Commissioner. This blossoms into a vision of individual soft drink cans being able to be tracked, which could end up on a crime scene. Firstly, try to think of a situation where an individual soft drinks can would need to be identified – compare the bar codes on a couple of identical products for a moment and you’ll see that they aren’t currently. Then move on to consider how someone could be individually associated with a drinks can, what would happen, would they have to give a fingerprint or retina scan whenever they bought a can from a vending machine? Even putting aside all that, having the tag attached to a can would render it virtually unreadable anyway, as the metal in the can would interfere with the signal. To be honest a criminal has more to fear from his mobile phone broadcasting his location than a drinks can.

All in all the entire article is based more on science fiction, than any sort of science fact.

Pictures

RFID Practicals

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Our RFID Reader Portal

Today was the last day of the RFID course, which was the programming part – however I thought I’d just post a picture of the result of our labs on the previous two days.

The purpose of the lab was to give us an opportunity to try out techniques for doing a site survey, and to build a prototype design for an RFID solution, in this case to one of the most difficult tasks, parcel processing.

Whilst there is an awful lot of hype about RFID tags allowing people to find out what is in your fridge from the other side of the street, and grand visions of not having to unload your shopping trolley onto the checkout at the supermarket, the result is really quite different. RFID signals are pretty susceptible to a wide range of hazards such as metal, liquids, and even a box of cables will result in a tag being unable to be read. However this means that alongside the problems of reading a shopping trolley full of groceries, reading tags on parcels when you don’t know what will be in the packages, and you don’t know which way up the box will be is a bit difficult. This is why we were given this as a practical problem. The solution has to be able, at relatively high speed, be able to read a tag on a box containing unknown contents, when the tag could be at any angle.

The solution also has to be practical in terms of cost – so you can’t just surround the conveyor belt with readers. We ended up using three readers, and then bouncing the signals around with aluminium foil (a real solution would use something like steel). This managed to read all of the example parcels wherever we placed the tags!

Computers/Technology

RFID Training

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Water Feature

So today I had the first of four days of training in the delights of RFID theory and practice given by Intermec, one of the big companies in the arena.

The course was held at their office in Reading, which is conveniently located in what is often referred to as the MCI building, but after the company was taken over is now owned by Verizon in what the front of the buses refer to as the Reading International Business Park, which sits next to the M4/A33 junction on the southern edge of Reading.

The impression has always been given that the building was intended to be used by MCI as a regional HQ, however almost as soon as they moved in the company hit money troubles, and since then most locals have thought that the building was half empty. Certainly walking around the building there is a lot of space, and a number of other companies, like Intermec renting space. The large car park behind the building also appeared to be half empty for most of the day too.

Having said that, it is a very nice building. We had lunch courtesy of Intermec in the subsidised site restaurant, which offered a wide choice of different types of cuisine, and everything from snacks to a full meal. I went for a Beef Madras, which was excellent. Adjacent to the restaurant is a nice water feature, which is visible from the road as you drive past. What isn’t visible is that since the site is on a hill, there is a nice water feature linking an upper and lower pond.

Cottage

One slightly sad feature of the whole site sits adjacent to the main building, alongside the road into the car park, and is a pretty old looking cottage.

I’m assuming that the building is listed, hence why it remains. In some ways I think it makes a slightly depressing site as it is totally out of place in relation to what surrounds it, and location wise sits on a roundabout looking out onto the main dual carriageway into Reading. I guess that for those reasons it probably isn’t used as a house any more, so whilst they’ve followed the letter of the listing rules in preserving the building, I don’t really think that they’ve followed the spirit of the rules, as since with any building the character is as much expressed by the location and use.

Anyway, moving on to the course, it was pretty heavy going technically – I had to remember a whole load of A-Level physics as we looked at the various methods in which RFID works. Whilst I found it complicated, I dread to think how others on the course, none of which, aside from my colleague from work, are native English speakers. We have one Egyptian, two Belgians, two Portuguese and two Hungarians on the course, and certainly in the case of the two Hungarians I think one was at least in part translating for the other. It probably also gets quite interesting for them as the trainer is originally from Taunton, and still occasionally has bits of a classic Somerset accent, which came through quite noticeably when he said ‘RFID‘ a couple of times. In terms of the content, it was pretty obviously an Intermec course, rather than a general course run by Intermec. Although we covered all the different forms of RFID technology, the stuff that Intermec don’t supply was only in brief. We also had a whole section at the end of the day going through the range of Intermec equipment.

Having said that, the trainer did give us some useful tips and tools for working out whether a system is viable in terms of the technology. He also told us a couple of salutary tails, about what users expect from the technology versus what it can actually achieve. For example the oft discussed prospect of tags replacing barcodes on individual items allowing customers to just wheel their trollies out of a supermarket without having to unload onto the checkout is a long way off.

He also told us about a project that he was called in to sort out at a parcel sorting operation in the UK where the initial supplier had led the customer to believe that they could tag almost at the individual parcel level and scan containers of 20 parcels as they passed on a conveyor belt. In actual fact this is nigh on impossible, and the final solution was to tag the containers instead – which achieved what the customer was looking for anyway as the parcels were already sorted by this point anyway.

Another interesting story he told us was about a system he helped to set up for a car dealership in the Middle East. Each car sold by the dealership was tagged, so that when the car was brought in for servicing the technicians could access the service history easily, and also this allowed the cars to be tracked through the various stages of the service, and even linked to spare parts – also tagged – located in the stores. As an added bonus, the tagging allows customers to track progress of their vehicle service in real-time using a web site.

On the next few days of the course we get a chance to try out some of the hardware, exploring the issues with placing the RFID readers correctly, and then on Friday we move on to actually writing the software to process the results from the tags. Certainly interesting stuff.