Yeeha!

Finally the new site (www.corerfid.com) is up and running.

At least now we'll be able to keep it up to date more easily.

The Internet of Things : Is it worth my brain cycles?

Well, the new web site is up and (sort of) running. It's been a thrash and I've had to acquire a new set of skills (don't believe anyone that says, oh yes use this CMS and you won't have to worry abouty HTML) but its nice to see it working and its certainly something we can now maintain much more easily than before .. hats off to StudioNorth that did the central design work and Sitefinity, the CMS.

So now I can get back to real work... I'm trying to work out whether this whole "Internet of Things" debate is worth anybody's attention. On one hand, there's no doubt that there could be benefits in the concept but am I alone in thinking that its another bandwagon for the bureaucrats and to get on and do things. there's plenty of stuff around, I'll share my thoughts here.

No news Is No News...

Yes, I know its been quiet over here. Trouble is I have been up to my ears in re-writing our main web site for the last few weeks. At least the fruits of those labours should appear soon, but it has meant I haven't had time for much else lately.

I'm constantly impressed by the level of innovation in the RFID tag arena as more applications drive the development of specialised tags and the arrival of new tags drives new applications.

We've just started with two new ranges of tags that are getting some interest from our users. Firstly we now have access to some ATEX compliant tags which are suitable for use in environments where there is an explosive atmosphere. Since many manufacturing processes, especially in the petrochemical industries, have this form of troublesome environment these tags will extend the areas in which we can deploy solutions.

The second range of tags is adding to our range of tamper detection offerings. There are many applications for RFID in the area of validation of assets, these tags make the range of possibilities wider, adding the ability to detect tampering without destroying the data on the tag. It will be interesting to report on some of the applications for these down stream.

Blimey, a whole month since my last post! I can't even claim to being off on holiday so we'll just have to put it down to idleness, I guess.

I've been working to upgrade our web site and that seems to soak up a fair bit of time and attention but it looks like the new design is more or less agreed so we should be able to get going on editting the content fairly soon. One of the things I'm hoping to do is to make the solutions area a whole lot better so we can let folk learn more about the real value they can get out of this technology.

There seems to be a number of projects kicking up in the automotive arena at the moment - tracking vehicles one way or another, either pure RFID or RFID and ANPR in collaboration. Do I sense the green shoots of emerging from recession? Well, don't ask me! If you want the blog for guesses on the economy you'd be better off trying Robert Peston's than mine.

The Real Deal In RFID

Sometimes it seems like everything is incredibly complicated and then something comes along that is really simple.

I've been taking some photos for our web site today and, as part of that, we wanted to get some shots of a new RFID reader that plugs into a USB port on a laptop. Our techie guys had said that not only was this little thing very neat but it was easy to use. Plug it in they said, It doesn't need any software.

So, since I hardly ever get to play with any of this technology, I thought I would have a go with this. Plugged the beasty into a USB port, opened an empty Word document and waved some tags at it. Voila, instant RFID reading, with each tag ID appearing in the Word document just as if I'd typed it there. Of course it's not much of an application but as a way of demonstrating the simplicity of RFID it's hard to beat!

Run Rabbit Run

One of the interesting features of RFID is the opportunities it presents in marketing. Of course folk are rightly concerned about privacy issues (I'm a bit puzzled by some of the planned EU legislation but more of that later) but it does offer ways to personalise things and also to create new interactions with consumers that can help develop a brand.

We've been working with one marketing group AKQA to develop tags used by Mike as part of their NikeTown Runners program to develop the Nike + brand.

We've got a case study on this although it's not publicly available on the web site. But there's an exclusive for blog readers here.

How Not To Do RFID....

I’m always keen to learn the lessons of real-world deployments but it’s pretty rare for someone to come right out and say “this is where we fouled up”. There’s a really useful “How Not To Do RFID” guide at Industry Wizards where the anonymous author lists thirteen lessons “learned the hard way”. I sent it around to all our team, it should be required reading for project leaders and RFID suppliers! See what you think.

Another fishy tale....

This qualifies as my most curious use of RFID so far this week.

In Spain they're using it to track the growth and productivity of muscle beds. With upwards of 500 ropes of muscles attached to each farming platform and the problem that from the top all the ropes look the same, RFID is providing a way of deciding which rope needs to be harvested when.

The project is using some of the same Confidex tags that we work with and supply.

Right, I'm off for me tea........

Fish & Chips

All right, I can't resist a Sun style headline.

In case you missed it in RFID Journal, IBM are going to be working with the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers to get traceability from farm to point of sale.

This is just the latest example of RFID being use in food tracking. With consumers always concerned about the origins of food and the potential this has for improving public health (by providing the tracking needed for product recalls) this seems liek something that other sectors could consider.

A bit of new news on London Underground...

We've got a short case study up at our web site, just in case you haven't seen the coverage in RFID Journal and in The Register. (Must be some sort of coup!)

Brussels Declares Its Hand : Will Recommendations Stamp On The Green Sprouts Of The RFID Economy?

The EU has finally got around to publishing its recomendations on protecting citizens' privacy when RFID is implemented.

For those suffering from insomnia, here is the complete recommendation.

The essence though is:

• operators of RFID systems will need to assess their potential impact on privacy and will have to protect the public against possible privacy invasions, including monitoring and reviewing protective measures.

• they will have to submit their assessments to a monitoring authority 6 weeks prior to deployment.

• they will be obliged to inform individuals of the presence of RFID readers by agreed signage.

• they will have to inform individuals of the presence of tags placed on or embedded in products.

• in retail applications operators will also be required to deactivate or remove tags at the point of sale unless the assessment indicates that the data held or derivable from the presence of the tag does not constitute a threat to privacy or personal data protection.

Although the recomendations recognise the difference between retail / mass market applications of RFID and others, it is clear that this affect deployments of RFID within businesses with an additional impact on the effort needed to deploy RFID based applications.

Here's our own thoughts on the privacy issue and a fact sheet on the EU recomendations.

RFID & Model trains

Yet another new application this month. This one wins my prize for least expected use of RFID (though there are some others in the pipeline that fit the bill too!) for March.

We were approached by a group that promotes the use of electronics in model railways. They have taken some of the CoreRFID components, together with their own technology to build a series of kits for modellers.

What would a model railway want with RFID? Well, if you’ve got a really ambitious model – we’re not talking about the toy train oval on the carpet – then you may have parts of the layout that you can’t see from where you operate. What could be worse than setting the points expecting the passenger express to emerge from the sidings only to find you’ve got a goods train appearing instead! If you could identify which trains were standing in the sidings then that would solve the problem wouldn’t it?

That’s exactly what this month’s application for RFID is all about. Tiny tags that can be mounted under model locomotives, trucks or carriages; readers that can be placed under critical points on the layout; and the multiplexing components to bring the data from several readers back to one computer. The picture shows a 12mm RFID tag mounted under an N gauge (=2mm to the foot) truck; half the size of the popular OO gauge model railways showing just how easy it is to tag a small model.

Then the computer can display which train is where for the operator or, for an exhibition display drive a display telling the audience just which train has pulled into the station, which engine it is which rake of carriages and so on.

I hope that a full case study will be available on our web site soon.

Going Underground

The latest application that we're involved in is a deployment of RFID on the London Underground. They are using UHF RFD tags to keep track of which individual escalator steps need maintenance (no, I hadn't realised that they needed to worry about individual steps either!).

As part of the project they are tagging 30,000 steps and using RFID readers mounted beside moving escalators so that they get an instant read out of which steps need exchanging without stopping the escalator.

It's a MUCH easier way of doing it than peering in the dark and greasy underneath of an escalator looking for labels on the steps.

As a follow up to our involvement in the Royal Institution event. Here's our bit from Lecture 2.....

CoreRFID Demo For Royal Institution Christmas Lecture

For anyone that's interested in these lectures but missed them, Five and the Royal Institution will publish the series as a DVD box set, hopefully in March 2009.

Museums

Blimey - another month gone!

After all the running around with the Royal Institution demo I've been able to get back to some real work this month but again I'm going to put forward one of our own applications as my interesting solution of the month - even if its only because its in a good cause.

We've done a few implementations for visitor interaction in museums but one that has recently been installed has a particulalry important application.

The Museum voor Communicatie's new RFID enabled exhibition opened in December. As part of this they implemented a system that collected up visitor's information as they went around the exhibitis and present it back to them in a demonstration of how easy it is for someone to steal identity details on line. There's more about it on the press release on our web site but I think that this is a great idea that will help kids learn about the realities of the on-line world, great opportunities but some risks as well.