I am a beginner to Arduino and I have been working on a project to track RFID-embedded items for the last few weeks. I am working on going through the starter kit, though this project is time-limited. My goal is to make an Arduino-based system that can track items and display the number "in" and the number "out". An item would first be marked as "in," and later as "out." The Arduino would have to track those items, display the number in each respective state on either an LCD or a TFT, and also be able to accept user input as to which state an item should be considered ("in" or "out"). The minimum range should be about 6 inches but a meter would be preferable. The tags should be as small as possible. To put that in context, I have a business where my employees go out into the field with a toolkit. At the beginning and end of every shift, the managers have to take inventory to make sure that the toolboxes have been returned with the same number of tools that they went in with. This is time-consuming and inefficient. I would like to have an Arduino-based RFID reader that could read tags that I would place on all the tools. Then, the managers would only have to look at a screen to see that all the tools have been returned. My questions are as follows:
Can an Arduino read an RFID tag reliably?
What would be the best frequency for the requisite range (125 kHz, 13.56 MHz, 902-928 MHz)?
How would I go about counting and displaying the number of items "in" and "out?"
What RFID reader should I use?
Thanks for the help in advance. If you have any questions, feel free to post or PM me.
I'm more concerned with having a system that can read and track tags right now than for using it in day-to-day operations. Eventually, though, I will want to use it throughout the company.
I would also want to use RFID to track employee uniforms (sometimes employees like to bring their clothes home with them, which is against company policy), but that would be in the distant future.
What you want to do is called asset tracking. This requires an RFID reader that can cope with multiple tags in the field. This means using a UHF RFID reader and tags, these are quite expensive.
As the arduino simply deals with the data it can handle the data from any sort of reader.
As I said the Arduino simply collects the data from the reader. At the elevated prices of a UHF reader they expect you to use a PC but an Arduino can cope with the data.
LairdGlencairn:
how would I connect it to the Arduino?
Obtain, read and understand the technical specification for the device, which will explain how to interface to it. A quick look at the site you linked to didn't reveal any information about the interface but with a sale for the best part of five hundred bucks at stake I expect they would provide that information if you were serious. One potential problem is that the description of the SDK implies that this is intended to interface to a PC rather than a microcontroller. These days that's more likely to mean USB than RS232, and that implies the need to provide a USB host port and write a driver for it. At this point I would ask whether there is any good reason to choose Arduino for this - you would certainly need to provide a server to manage this anyway, and since it is easier to interface it directly to the PC I can't see any need for the Arduino, which is making the solution harder not easier.
