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RFID is one of those things that seem cool until you start playing with it and then it turns out that the only uses for it are really boring. Like, you can't us
by roel_v 11y ago
RFID is one of those things that seem cool until you start playing with it and then it turns out that the only uses for it are really boring. Like, you can't use it to locate stuff because the range is too short; you can't rely on stuff to have chips (food, or clothes or whatever) and it's a major time sink if you'd have to start tagging stuff yourself; it's cumbersome to install readers everywhere and not being able to rely on half lives measured in decades instead of months, etc.
I used to have an rfid chip implanted in my hand. I had all these ideas of what I was going to do with it - log on to my computer by putting an rfid reader in my keyboard, build a magic 'touch the wall and music starts playing' thing etc. All of them turned out to be very boring and useless in practice. Logging into my machine - meh, turns out that it takes longer for monitors to come back on than to type the password. Building (useful) user interfaces based on rfid is very hard and doesn't add anything over a regular proximity sensor.
The only idea I have left is that in my current house, I have a place where I could put an rfid reader so that if I'd get a chip implanted in my gluteus maximus (my butt, essentially) I could activate an automatic door opener by bumping into it when I have my hands full. I just can't motivate myself to set this up and discovering again that it's a dud in real life.
- Sidnicious 11y agoOne interesting use: https://vimeo.com/157990864 https://vimeo.com/157990864 This library lets visitors rearrange the books organically (if you pull out multiple books on a topic, you're encouraged to put them back on the shelf together instead of finding their old homes). The books are tracked with RFID so that they remain easy to find individually.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y agoThat's very cool! I thought it deserved its own post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266334
- spectaclepiece 11y agoyes indeed, 1 up
- novaleaf 11y agoI'm a frequent library user, and this may be fine for certain types of collections (where you look for very specific books) but is terrible for general use, as you are removing the ability to search by topic.
- eterm 11y agoI guess the idea is that books naturally fall next to other similar books, a kind of "People who read this also read..." system. I can understand the experiment, the dewey-decimal system doesn't have to be the ultimate in organisation.
- blacksmith_tb 11y agoIt could certainly slow searching by topic (since patrons are remixing the books based on whatever way they're using them). It does seem to demand quite a bit of infrastructure, adding RFID scanners to every shelf (and keeping them working). If it truly would allow every book in the collection to be pinpointed in realtime, that would be a plus, many times the catalog can only tell you that the title you're looking for should be on the shelf, not where it has ended up.
- Laaw 11y agoHow? One of the search terms could easily be topic...
- novaleaf 11y agoright, and then you get listed the locations of 20 books on 20 shelves scattered around the library. Extremely fatiguing and time consuming if you want to skim a couple.
- profeta 11y agosadly, this one very interesting aspect is buried down the spiffy but hardly useful table scanner.
- dsr_ 11y agoIf you carry a proximity card in your rear pocket, that's pretty much the same thing except that there's no surgery and it's easy to swap out or discard when no longer useful. Source: the door-opening sensors at my college, many years ago, were all located at the right height for a key in the back pocket to activate them. I referred to it as the "buttprint identification system".
- LeifCarrotson 11y agoBut it is of critical importance to have the sensors located at the right height! At my school, I had to jump up quite a bit (and I am 6' tall) to get them to read the card. In many installations of both hardware and software, the actual usage of the system is quite different from what was imagined by the designers. Prox card installers imagine people holding up cards on lanyards. They mandate it not be carried in a wallet, because "the magnetic fields of a credit card can erase it" and it might break if it's bent. In real life, only freshmen carry lanyards, credit cards use high-coercivity stripes and aren't damaged by the prox readers or cards, and wallets with IDs and credit cards are stiff enough. Talk to your users about how they use your product and what they need! You will learn something!
- xkcd-sucks 11y agoThe height's probably specified by building code re: disabled people, whether or not it's compliant
- seanp2k2 11y agoThey also have longer-range solutions now and things that use Bluetooth instead of rfid for this. Works from a few feet away. I'm guessing that it's using some combination of Bluetooth MAC + signal strength.
- coldpie 11y agoI think you could basically switch "RFID" with "smart home device" and this comment would be just as accurate. It seems finding a problem to solve is much harder than finding a solution.
- roel_v 11y agoYeah, that's right. I have a house full of such stuff but when push comes to shove, most of it is 'meh'.
- imgabe 11y agoCouldn't you just put a push button switch there with the same effect? Something like the large square handicap accessible switches for powered doors in public buildings.
- roel_v 11y agoThe rfid tag also acts as an authentication/authorization token. Not a very good one, but not worse than a key either.
- Godel_unicode 11y agoSlight quibble: the token is just authentication. The authorization is done by the pad. Granted, the current scheme grants the access authorization to any authenticated tag, but that could change if butt-thentication took off.
- danvoell 11y agoI would probably hold off on the butt chip. Why not get an optical viewer and train it to understand when you need help with the door?
- Splines 11y agoA button at floor level that you can press with your foot is probably more practical.
- Raphmedia 11y agoI think we already solved this issue ages ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_door_operator#Triggering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_door_operator#Triggeri... :)
- gkya 11y agoHe could also leave his stuff on the ground and open the door in most if not all cases, I think. Why create problems to solutions that come with their own problems (installation, maintenance...)?
- chatmasta 11y agoWait, sorry... what?! You had an RFID chip implanted in your hand??? I think that story deserves a little elaboration. EDIT: Wow, this is apparently a thing. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)#Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)#Hobb...
- logfromblammo 11y agoSeemed like a normal hacker thing to do to me. It shows real commitment to the tech. And also, it looks cool when you can make machines do stuff with just a wave of your hand. Sorcery!
- roel_v 11y agoNot much to it, really. It became feasible around 2007-2008 ish or so, when you could buy glass ampules with rfid tags in them and simple readers retail online (my timing might be a few years off). There were several forums about it at the time, most of them gone now it seems; I suspect because people found out the same thing I did, that it's just not that useful and that the novelty wears off after the first 5 times you wave your hand over a reader and have a led go on or a dialog pop up on a screen. I went to a piercing study, girl stamped a hole in the upper layers of my skin, made a small cut to open it up a bit further, slid in the ampule (which had been autoclaved first of course). Band aid on it, done. It was strange being in a studio with a bunch of people with facial tattoos and horn implants and discs the size of my wrist in their ears - and them looking at me like I was a freak from out of space. I do have to say though that I had to search around a bit to find someone willing to do it. There are plenty of places that will take your money to suspend you from their ceiling with flesh hooks in your back, but that won't stick a glass pill under your skin. Go figure. You can also buy kits online if you want to DIY - basically big needle guns that are used to tag cattle which you just jam into your hand and pull the trigger on, literally. That would've been a bit too hard core for me, tbh.
- ams6110 11y agoCompared to using a biometric such as a fingerprint it makes some sense. Fingerprints can in theory be stolen and reproduced, and you can't change them if that happens. You could replace an implanted RFID tag if that were ever to become necessary, but otherwise it's something you always have like your fingerprint.
- cbhl 11y ago> I could activate an automatic door opener by bumping into it when I have my hands full. My co-worker solves by unlocking the front door when the home server sees his phone's (and his wife's phone's) MAC address on the home wi-fi network. (But only during "waking hours" so the server doesn't leave the door unlocked when everyone is sleeping.)
- fudged71 11y agoYeah but he's missing out on surgically inserting electronics into his butt! Sad!
- lintiness 11y agoalta ski area uses rfid intelligently -- embedded in lift tickets to forego scanning bottlenecks.
- uxp 11y agoSolitude, Brighton and Snowbird also use the same tech. I know Solitude has had contactless lift ticket swiping in place for well over the past decade.
- seanp2k2 11y agoAlso Squaw Valley in Tahoe. Ski passes are a great use for RFID! Their season passes are prox cards with a photo ID on them. Edit: they also work from 1-2 feet away. You just leave it in your pocket and walk through the gate.
- bliti 11y agoI'm prototyping an IoT system that will use RFID tags to track inventory as it moves around an area. The system will provide live updates on location. Imagine knowing exactly where things are at all times through a simple dashboard. Nothing super amazing, but not boring. :)
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- swampthinker 11y agoHey man, I'm fascinated with the RFID space and would love to learn more about what you're building. Got a website?
- bliti 11y agoYes, but the simple website is very scarce in details. The project is in pre-alpha. I was just writing code for the API like an hour ago. I dont want to publicize it here at the moment, but if you send me an email (check profile) I will gladly talk to you about it. Btw, I went to the demo of enerscore (which looks pretty interesting) and it wasn't working for me. I'm on Firefox last build and OSX if that helps. :)
- swampthinker 11y agoFirefox has been pretty finnicky for some reason, but we're actually processing a giant data dump at the moment. Was the address unsupported or did the property just never load?
- bliti 11y agoIt did not load. I did not check the console so debugging data from that request is unavailable. I could try it out again if you want. :)
- hc000 11y agoWalmart uses RFID to track inventory. http://www.usanfranonline.com/resources/supply-chain-management/rfid-technology-boosts-walmarts-supply-chain-management/ http://www.usanfranonline.com/resources/supply-chain-managem...
- roel_v 11y agoSure, there are plenty of actual uses for RFID, what I meant is that most of the 'that'd be cool to play with' uses are impossible, and what is possible aren't the things you'd play with (I mean I don't have a warehouse, and for tracking stuff in my pantry it's impractical because of the reasons I mentioned earlier).
- notatoad 11y agoSo does just about every other large supply chain. There's lots of practical use cases for RFID, they're just all pretty boring.
- collyw 11y agoWhat I want is RFID tags on all of my pieces of kit for when I go kayaking. Before I leave the house I scan my bag and see if I have missed anything. I was going to write a phone app to do it when I got a phone that had NFC, then I read up and found out the range was way too short.
- kfk 11y agoKayaker here too. The logistics pains of tour kayaking have too long gone unsolved, if you ever start working on this - give me a shout.
- sliverstorm 11y agoIt's naturally a volume solution. RFID makes close-range identification just a little faster & easier for a lot of hassle. So it's been worthwhile anywhere you need to identify a lot of things at close range. Ski passes, cows, library books, boxes in a warehouse... and anything volume tends not to be very "the future!" exciting.
- tjohns 11y agoAs someone who frequently goes skiing, the recent deployment of RFID scanners at larger resorts is nothing short of amazing: You can reload the passes online, the lift attendants can check everyone's pass just by waving a scanner across a crowd (no more having to precisely line up a barcode), you get online stats and achievements at the end of the day, and if you have photos taken on the hill they automatically show up in your online account. So ya, definitely some really cool stuff you can do with them. :)
- B-Con 11y agoJust skied for the first time in years and the resort didn't even have attendants checking passes. You just put your pass in your left pocket and when you got to the front of the line a turnstile would admit you.
- rosege 11y agoAnd a huge improvement over the magnetic strip passes. I have a pair of ski pants with magnets to hold the pocket closed, which is an incredibly dumb design, and they kept wiping my ski pass
- yakult 11y agoThe butt-chip. It's like the punchline of a joke. Still... Put a reader in your chair so that when you sit down somewhere, things turn on and log in? Butt-thentication, if you will. Might be cool in a car. ...maybe that's how the batmobile works.
- amelius 11y ago> RFID is one of those things that seem cool until you start playing with it and then it turns out that the only uses for it are really boring. Well, boring for users perhaps. For people who like to track you, it is certainly not boring. It is more like fingerprint heaven!