PHP and rfidi?

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Lestat
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Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:17 am

PHP and rfidi?

Post by Lestat » Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:21 am

Hello,

I am *trying* to learn about rfid and all the things that go with it for an idea I have. The pricing for a lot of the readers I'm finding are quite prohibitive for "just a guy with an idea". It seems most readers use .NET, C, or Java to interact with them. I am only familiar with PHP/MySQL and assorted toys(jQuery, ODBC etc).

Do readers allow interacting with any variation or library of PHP?

I would appreciate any thoughts on this,
Thanks.

Matt
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Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Matt » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:52 am

Lestat wrote:I am *trying* to learn about rfid and all the things that go with it for an idea I have. The pricing for a lot of the readers I'm finding are quite prohibitive for "just a guy with an idea".
Give Rifidi Toolkit a try! Emulator and Prototyper will let you create virtual readers that you can talk to.

http://wiki.rifidi.org/index.php/Emulator_User's_Guide
http://wiki.rifidi.org/index.php/Protot ... er's_Guide

The download links are on our sourceforge page.
Lestat wrote:It seems most readers use .NET, C, or Java to interact with them.
This isn't entirely accurate. To be more accurate, many readers use TCP sockets as the primary methods of communication. The language used is irrelevant. The best reader to use if you are using emulator is the Alien, which has the most features and is the most complete.

Let me know if you have any more questions about emulator or a specific reader.

Lestat
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:17 am

Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Lestat » Fri Nov 05, 2010 12:17 pm

Thanks for the reply. I'm going to keep my eyes open on ebay and such for a "beater" to experiment with.

Matt
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Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Matt » Fri Nov 05, 2010 2:26 pm

Is this just for a hobby project? If so, you can buy LF hobby readers online for less than $100. The read range won't be great, but if you are trying to unlock your door through use of RFID or something along those lines it should work fine. Those generally communicate through serial, but assuming PHP has a serial library you should be able to talk to them just fine.

Commercial UHF readers will certainly be more expensive and you should be looking at several hundred for a used one. Even a cheap one should get you a read range in feet rather than inches, though.

Lestat
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:17 am

Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Lestat » Sat Nov 06, 2010 12:30 pm

It's more of a "lets see what I can do with this" type of thing. I would like to make a timing system for our local mountain bike club. I was successful in the past using UPC barcodees on race bibs, but ran into some troubles with dirty bibs, and sunlight reflections etc. There are some commercial RFID products out there, but the cost is very prohibitive. So I thought why not make my own for these guys. They cant afford the big name stuff. Thing is - RFID seems to have such a learning curve it may be too much for the time I have available.

I'm sure I don't need to know e-v-e-r-y thing about it, but a nice working knowledge of antennas and readers would be good. I'm just looking for fundamentals. Enough to get me up and running. Record start/finish passers through. Preferably with a home grown antenna built into a ground mat, rather than the typical fob situation.

I have learned that thinking outside the box (ie making own antennas and such) - makes anything possible. Its just data-in data-out :)

Matt
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Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Matt » Mon Nov 08, 2010 1:15 pm

Lestat wrote:It's more of a "lets see what I can do with this" type of thing. I would like to make a timing system for our local mountain bike club. I was successful in the past using UPC barcodees on race bibs, but ran into some troubles with dirty bibs, and sunlight reflections etc.
How far away are you planning on reading the tags from? And what speed are the tags going to be at when they pass through the field? Is this going to be mounted to a portal of some sorts, or is someone with a handheld reader going to be going through and reading the tags?
Lestat wrote:There are some commercial RFID products out there, but the cost is very prohibitive. So I thought why not make my own for these guys. They cant afford the big name stuff. Thing is - RFID seems to have such a learning curve it may be too much for the time I have available.
Build your own RFID reader? Like, use a computer, hook an antenna up to it, send out RF waves and receive the signal back from the tags? That is going to be very difficult, and will likely cost you much more money then buying a reader retail. If you go off of ebay it should cost even less:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ALIEN-ALR-9800-RFID ... 3a5e3daef9

Pick up one of those and a couple of antennas and you should be fine from a hardware standpoint. It should also give you a good read range, assuming you use some nice tags.

Lestat
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:17 am

Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Lestat » Mon Nov 08, 2010 2:43 pm

Sorry I mispoke. I wasn't planning on building my own reader. Just using a reader and antenna.

Typically we have made a "chute" to allow riders to come through in a single file line towards the finish line at a slow rate of speed. (These have multiple laps)

The alien reader is the exact reader I was looking at. I need to understand how the antennas talk to the readers etc. I don't know if I can just have those white square antennas. Which is sometimes called a circular antenna (though it comes in a square plastic "box").

Is this off topic for this thread/forum? I'd love to get more input!
Thanks!

Matt
Posts: 362
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 11:56 am
Organization: Pramari

Re: PHP and rfidi?

Post by Matt » Mon Nov 08, 2010 5:14 pm

Lestat wrote:Sorry I mispoke. I wasn't planning on building my own reader. Just using a reader and antenna.

Typically we have made a "chute" to allow riders to come through in a single file line towards the finish line at a slow rate of speed. (These have multiple laps)
I'd try if possible to mount your antennas to that "chute". It should act in a similar function to an RFID portal that you would find on, say, a conveyor in a factory.
Lestat wrote:The alien reader is the exact reader I was looking at. I need to understand how the antennas talk to the readers etc. I don't know if I can just have those white square antennas. Which is sometimes called a circular antenna (though it comes in a square plastic "box").
Here is a quick primer on RFID antennas:

http://www.skyrfid.com/RFID_Antenna_Tutorial.php
http://www.impinj.com/about-rfid/default.aspx

Pay close attention to the first link if you want to build your own antenna, although you will probably need to get even more involved then that to build one that will work. How the antennas talk to the readers is sort of beyond me; I don't know nearly enough about it to be of any help on the creation of an antenna.
Lestat wrote:Is this off topic for this thread/forum? I'd love to get more input!
Thanks!
This is a fine forum for this thread, don't worry.

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