RFID Inventory System Guidance

Projects General Guidance
1

I'm looking on creating a RFID inventory system for general equipment as this is for my final year project. The overall plan is simply to scan an item (with the tag attached) and to take that data to an inventory database with quantities for each item that has identified with the tag (if that makes sense?). I'm really confused on where to start as I've been looking all over the internet for some source materials, however I failed to find anything remotely helpful.

Currently I have an Arduino UNO, RFID RC522 with a white card and blue tag, Jumper cables.

2

You probably want to start with a kit that support native Ethernet/WiFi, which makes it easier to communicate with a database.

Which particular database application do you plan on working with? MySql? MSSQL? MariaDB? etc? Does it have to be a database?

3

A NodeMCU or WeMOS D1 Mini would be more suitable than an Arduino, as they have the ESP8266 chip with WiFi built in and lots more memory and computing power.

4

wvmarle:
A NodeMCU or WeMOS D1 Mini would be more suitable than an Arduino, as they have the ESP8266 chip with WiFi built in and lots more memory and computing power.

And interface directly with the 3.3 V MFRC522. :sunglasses:

1 Like
5

Thank you for the replies, is there any relatable projects that are similar to mine in a form of a video or webpage that anyone can find please? Been pulling my hair trying to find one so I can make a start lol!

6

As usual, break it down in separate steps.

For starters, make sure you can actually read a tag (and just print the number to the Serial monitor).

Have your database server ready to receive the RFID codes, do with it whatever it should do with it, and send an appropriate response. That could be as simple as an "OK" for data received/processed, or a more extensive response including numbers of items, warning that the number is invalid/unknown, or whatever you need.

Then make sure you have a means to connect to your database, to look up a number: that's gotta be in the form of your Arduino or NodeMCU sending an RFID code to the database server, and wait for the response from the database.

Of course now the MCU has to do something useful with the response, such as a bleep or lighting up an LED to show the user all is fine. You may want to resend the code if no response (and warn the user if there's a sustained error). Of course you have to add some kind of unique (random) identifier to avoid having the database process the same message twice, if the response was not received for whatever reason.

Finally link it all together. MCU tells RFID scanner to scan (maybe through user input like a push button), scanner scans and passes number to MCU, MCU sends it to database, database processes it, database send back response, MCU processes response.

That should be about it.

7

This topic was automatically closed 120 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.