Guidance for a Factory Employee RFID InfoSystem

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello,
My name is André and i'm doing an internship in a factory.
I'm new to arduino and i want to learn so i could develop this:

  1. Reads RFID card to identify the worker.
  2. Reads RFID round tag to identify the product the worker is going to work on.
  3. Asks which process the worker is going to do ( (1)injecting, (2)cutting, (3)packing, etc )
  4. Automatically registers date and time.
  5. Starts counting time till worker stops the counter, by passing the RFID card again.
  6. While worker doesn't pass the RFID card to finish the process, another worker can start another process on another product.
  7. Inserts all the information (worker ID, product ID, date, time, duration, process) in a database, excel spreadsheet, txt file, etc.

My little progress so far:

  1. Understood i needed a potentiometer for the lcd, that it has been shipped.
  2. Successfully tested example code on the keypad and RFID.

I'm a bit lost about what plan i should take in order to develop it.
(what code can i get? what code i must write? is hardware missing? how difficult is this project? will i be able to develop it without never tried arduino? is my cheap hardware bought on ebay good enough?)

Thanks in advance.
(Sorry for any language mistake. I'm also new to foruns.)

Note: I've attached 2 files. A photo of the connections i've done so far, and the hardware list i bought.

Captura de ecrã 2012-10-18, às 21.32.36.png
Captura de ecrã 2012-10-18, às 21.32.36.png1363×642 499 KB

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2

Hi, You need to tell us more about the different parts of this..

Inserts all the information (worker ID, product ID, date, time, duration, process) in a database, excel spreadsheet, txt file, etc.

This needs to run on some other computer, right??

I seems the Arduino can be the interface to everything, but it needs to communicate with a database / application computer??

3

The perfect scenario: sending the information over ethernet/wifi to a computer in real time. (excel, txt, etc)
The scenario i wouldn't dismiss: using the microSD card reader in the ethernet shield to store sometype of "log's" or something readable.

Thanks

4

I would approach project this from a barcode reader standpoint, not RFID. RFID systems work great as "keys" to things, but conveying say an RFID code to a job number is problematic. Barcodes are much better for such and they work well as "keys", just not as secure.

5

And what about using RFID to identify the employees and BarCode for the products?

I've searched on ebay and would this do the job? (barcode reader + Usb Host Shield)
http://tinyurl.com/factoryprojectbarcode
http://tinyurl.com/factoryprojectUsbHostShield

Thanks

6

That should do well enough, but if you can locate the older PS/2 style, you could have a lot more support.

http://arduino.cc/playground/ComponentLib/BarcodeScanner
http://arduino.cc/playground/uploads/ComponentLib/arduino-barcode-code.txt

Adafruit has a tutorial that include a HID mod that could work without the host shield:

7

andrebmsilva:
And what about using RFID to identify the employees and BarCode for the products?

I've searched on ebay and would this do the job? (barcode reader + Usb Host Shield)
http://tinyurl.com/factoryprojectbarcode
http://tinyurl.com/factoryprojectUsbHostShield

Thanks

There are also serial barcode-readers available. (without the need for an usb host shield)

The perfect scenario: sending the information over ethernet/wifi to a computer in real time. (excel, txt, etc)
The scenario i wouldn't dismiss: using the microSD card reader in the ethernet shield to store sometype of "log's" or something readable.

You can combine both.
Use the SD card to store your data on and use the ethernet shield to display the contents of the card on a webpage.