I am currently a student with access to an Arduino Uno, and I would like to see if a project I have in mind is feasible, and if so what kind of products would I need and what would the coding look like.
I would like to use some sort of RFID scanner to scan individual tags, which would then pull up some sort of information or powerpoint on a monitor that would display information about that component. I have the funding to purchase additional components but I would obviously like to keep this as simplistic as possible.
spycatcher2k:
You don't need an Arduino for this, you can get RFID units that connect via usb, just write a program on the PC, with a database for the information you wish to display.
Is this easy to do? is it as simple as plugging a URL into a code that will be triggered by a unique tag?
spycatcher2k:
As I have NO idea who you are, what your programming experience is, or even what the scope of the project is, this would be impossible to answer.
I understand the words, but there is no comprehension to meaning.
I have very little programming experience. This is a high school project that I was assigned by my teacher to figure out.
What I meant about the URL is, How difficult is it to program each individual tag to do a unique task? Such as display specific information
How difficult is it to program each individual tag to do a unique task?
Very simple. You can write about 750 bytes of data onto a Mifair tag, in 16 byte sectors. Then it is up to your program to do what you want with that information. So you could put a URL in those sectors along with a numeric code that tells your program what to do with it.
As it happens this forms part of Chapter 18 of the just out, third edition of my book Raspberry Pi for Dummies. Of course the code is for a Raspberry Pi not an Arduino. But as it has a display and a built in wi-fi you can do the whole project with one cheap board.
The projects I cover are an RFID card to select music files, to dress up a cut out doll and a rather bazaar singing version of Old McDonnell's Farm. Raspberry Pi-Dummies
You don't program the tag, you read the serial number
You can associate the Tag's number with data or you can have that data on the tag. I cover both examples in the music file example project.
Do you know any thing I could reference to start the programming? Maybe very simple entry level programming courses for whatever language I would need to code in
JMiller184:
Do you know any thing I could reference to start the programming? Maybe very simple entry level programming courses for whatever language I would need to code in
That book has all that in it. Note that it is only at Chapter 18 we get to do the interesting RFID stuff. The start of the book looks at programming in Scratch and Python. Chapter 18 is written in Python.
JMiller184:
I have very little programming experience. This is a high school project that I was assigned by my teacher to figure out.
Sounds like another teacher throwing their students into the deep without understanding the project themselves, or being able to provide the needed guidance...
Python is a pretty easy language to get started in, a great first language that is still very powerful and lets you do just about anything.
To talk to the database you'll probably also need to learn at least the basics of SQL. Using a database will be a lot easier to pull up specific pieces of information than trying to do that over an URL (which probably implies connecting to a web server - which in turn will also get its information from a database).
Indeed RFID reader, Raspberry Pi, appropriate display (such as a regular computer monitor), WiFi or wired network connection. Database either hosted locally on the Pi or on a remote server - MySQL is my favourite, very easy to work with. Sounds like the way to go.
wvmarle:
Sounds like another teacher throwing their students into the deep without understanding the project themselves, or being able to provide the needed guidance...
Python is a pretty easy language to get started in, a great first language that is still very powerful and lets you do just about anything.
To talk to the database you'll probably also need to learn at least the basics of SQL. Using a database will be a lot easier to pull up specific pieces of information than trying to do that over an URL (which probably implies connecting to a web server - which in turn will also get its information from a database).
Indeed RFID reader, Raspberry Pi, appropriate display (such as a regular computer monitor), WiFi or wired network connection. Database either hosted locally on the Pi or on a remote server - MySQL is my favourite, very easy to work with. Sounds like the way to go.
Android. Means your mobile can do it.
Use Python to generate some QR codes:
ZXing is a nice QR code reader package for Android development.
Use the Google package "Volley" to pass the QR code scanned to a PHP front end that looks up/edits data in a mySQL table.
A better approach as to having the app query an online PHP/SQL server (LAMP)...have the database stored "locally" on the phone in say a CSV file that has all the most up-to-date info.
When the app is launched, first thing it should do is check the "database_version" which you could simply have stored in a single SQL table that gives that DATETIME of the last update to the database...
If (most recent DATETIME > date_time_current_database_on_phone){ update }
Then launch the "main activity" for the app.
Cuts down on server load/SQL requests.
The only real overhead will then be the google API requests for QR code recognition.