I hope this piece finds you well. I need some advice on the approach I am supposed to take as i am currently clueless and my research led to nothing. I am currently doing my final year project, which is a smart shopping cart with RFID, I want to create a database for the shopping system, so that when a user taps an RFID card, which will be assigned to a certain product, e.g. milk, the system goes to the database and checks the price and type of milk that has been tapped and displays the information on an LCD.
My questions are: Is this doable ? And what kind of database can i use ? and advice on how i can approach the problem.
Your input and insights will be highly appreciated.
It is advanced, now that I think about it, I thought of using SQL database but I don't have much experience on it, just now i was doing research about excel if it could work
Use SQL or at least not excel. If you have access to MS Access with your school you can use that to help. I only have limited experience here, so don't take my suggestions as the best answer, but a possible answer. This would be almost identical to using barcodes for the same thing, so there should be a lot of available information.
Start to split the project into smaller parts. Then attack those parts one by one and integrate verified parts to the build. Else You will multiple the fault finding with a huge factor. In the industri we name it "system integration".
Why RFID ?
Almost every product on every shelf used a standardised 2D barcode - internationally - with a standardised numbering format, along with public databases that contain millions of product references.
You can surely use RFID, but then you need to add new ID tags to every product you’re ever going to scan…
You can put the tag behind the label on the shelf and tap it with the device he's building to get extra info or something. He didn't seem to be wanting to tag every product.
If that is your only reason, then barcodes are even cheaper. RFID costs pennies, barcodes cost fractions of pennies. If you are interested in learning about the tech, then that is another thing.
I am interested in learning more about technology. To be honest, I was not much aware of barcode scanners. But as it came up in this discussion I will research more about it and run the idea with supervisors as in my proposal I mentioned that I would be utilizing RFID. Maybe they will be a lot easier and still meet the requirements of my project
Barcode scanners are great. They just read the barcode as text and spit out the numbers like a keyboard typed it. And you can use the existing barcodes because they are all standardized.
Ot sounds like you need to define your requirements in a lot more detail…
Simple example.
The data is rarely stored in the tag (of any sort), it is merely a UID that allows you to look up a dynamic dataset with complete item information.
Barcodes, both 2D, and 3D / QR codes.
2D can be simply swiped with an optical pen, or ‘scanned’ in 2D with a line ‘scanner’.
A more complex scanner using a camera, or geometric sweep of the target code is needed for the more complex codes.
These more complex codes can contain quite a lot of relevant data (a couple of ‘K’), but it’s permanent with the tag.
Whereas any tag could contain a simple value - to look up infinite amounts of dynamic data stored in a database / dataset environment.
All these functions can be applied equally to RFID tags, except the tag has electronic ($) components - as opposed to a simple piece of sticky (cents) paper or vinyl.
Before you get very far in the design stage, decide if you are going to have only one scanner in the whole store or will you have multiple identical devices competing for access to your data base.