Hey,
I'm working on a project to track Model railroad cars. The idea is we attach the tag to the bottom of the car and as it rolls over a sensor my arduino yun collects the data and sends it over wifi to a pc that then updates a database. The issue I'm having is with the rfid reader range. We want to place the reader under the table the table, but the reader seems to have to be really close to the tag in order to get a reliable read every time. The distance from the reader below the table to the tag on the bottom of the car is about 1.5 inches.
Have you guys played with any RFID readers that get better range than the ID20 I'm using? I know Innovations makes longer range readers but the price gap between the ID20 and those readers seems like a significant jump and I'd like to stick around $50 or less for the reader. I'm also open for suggestions if you know of any technology that might better fit my project than RFID. The only real reason I went with RFID was the cost of the tags are relatively low since I need to put them on the bottom of every railcar.
Here's the gear I'm using currently:
RFID Reader: RFID Reader ID-20LA (125 kHz) - SEN-11828 - SparkFun Electronics
Capsule tags RFID Glass Capsule (125kHz) - SEN-09416 - SparkFun Electronics
Button tags: RFID Button - 16mm (125kHz) - SEN-09417 - SparkFun Electronics
Thanks.