Hi all! Would really appreciate some help with the design of this project. Newbie to arduino but willing to learn and listen. Aim of the project is to develop a RFID reader to read134.2khz tags at close range of approx 10cm which will then place the tag number via arduino into an attached laptop excel sheet. The idea is that the sheep's tag is read and then relevant information such as weight etc is stored alongside it.
looks like the tag reader has a serial interface
what do the need the arduino for if it then sends data to a laptop
connect the tag reader direct to the laptop?
Any Arduino should be OK for that reader. The processing required is fairly easy. One thing to note is that to get the best from the reader to need to adjust the tuning capacitors.
This thread discusses that, and also provides some code to use with that reader (post #20).
Hi thanks for the reply and highlighting that thread. Did you build something similar yourself? If I go for say the arduino Rev3 would that be suitable? Ultimately the goal is for the antenna to read the sheep's tag while in a fixed crate then compile the tags with relevant data such as weight, body condition etc in a database possibly through excel. Is it complex to do the coding for something to work? Further down the line if possible I would love to attach linear actuators so that if a tag was read a certain linear actuator would open a gate hence drafting the sheep (ambitious I know) but hear to learn and thanks again
I built a fairly simple reader program (the start of it is in that other thread).
In my case I wanted something handheld that simply wrote the tag number to an LCD screen. To improve battery life, I ended up using an ATTiny85 micro processor, that sleeps between readings. The unit had a single button that activated the scanning functionality.
In your case, because you want to push the results to a database, you might want to consider something that has WiFi (assuming you have WIFi available) capability, such as an ESP32 board.
A nice! I'm trying to get the ouput into a database so that other data can be added to the specific tag rather than just a list of the tag numbers. Unfortunately due to being in the middle of nowhere there would be no wifi - would need wired connection to laptop. Had thought about using excel as would let you hopefully but the tag number in one column and then weight for example separate to this. Not sure how realistic this is. Limited electrical knowledge with a lot more mechanical knowledge for building the weigh crate/gates etc for the sheep
The ESP32 has a couple of WiFi modes... so you can essentially set up as a "hotspot" and connect the laptop to that.
It really depends how you are going to capture and access all the data. You could just get the Arduino to write the data to an SD card, then transfer that to your PC afterwards.
The Arduino can update an Excel spreadsheet data base on a Windows laptop via a serial USB connection (the same one that was used to upload the program, if you like).