RFID (radio frequency identification) chips or tags as they are better known are the size of the smallest coin in your purse, but they can hold huge amounts of data that can be used in methods that can do incredible things.

For instance, RFID tags are in the majority of office identity tags and in some passports, allowing the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country secure.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop keeper had to key prices into the cash register, correct errors and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but picture a teenager typing in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the superstore every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Supermarkets have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers - no-one could remember that amount.

No-one can, but bar codes make it straightforward and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags send out their information on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not need to see the tag to read it.

The scanner can read what is in your trolley without you having to unload it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are subtracted from stock immediately so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wishes to buy. So, if one brand of cat food sells better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thus keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in inventory control or asset management to give it its more formal title, can translate itself into other uses as well. An RFID tag can be put under your cat's fur or in its collar so that you can locate him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, big cats and other endangered animals for years. Now you can have it done with your pets as well.

Company vehicles, as assets of the business, often carry RFID tags and you can have one placed in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to avoid lost luggage.

The US government insists that RFID tags be used on all vehicles carrying ammunition or dangerous substances and have done for almost ten years. The US military is in fact the principal user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as weapons, battle tanks, fuel, containers, artillery, you name it.

Some people are anxious about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For instance, they do not like getting junk emails from people that have been able to track the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, rfid, shopping, software, stock, technology

The usage of RFID tags has been picking up speed for several years, but 2010 has increased proliferation for three key reasons: 1] cheaper apparatus and tags, 2] increased dependability and performance (up to 99.9% accurate now); 3] the agreement of an international standard for UHF passive tags.

Cost has always been a prohibiting factor, but a Korean company has declared that it will have passive RFID tags for sale for about three US cents each by the closing stages of 2011

Historically, the biggest user of RFID tags was and still is the US Department of Defense. The armed forces use smart tags to trace the containers of their hardware and sometimes individual articles of hardware too. The aviation industry has also been using them worldwide for a long time.

The latest industries to find a use for the passive tags are financial services for IT asset tracking and health care, where more than 60% of the top medical apparatus companies are using passive UHF RFID in 2010.

Businesses that have not developed a reliable system to track their stock and know exactly what they have of everything that they sell are apt to hold excess levels of stock to make certain they can supply their customers' requirements.

If you can reduce excess stock by using improved information, you can: trim down investment, storage space, labour costs; and expand asset utilization, boost stock turnover, facilitate faster billing cycles, all of which will significantly contribute to cash flow.

In short, the usage of RFID:

1] Facilitates stock control and item location in real time, which cuts product search time, reduces inventory levels and enhances control of the manufacturing process. 2] Enhances compliance, enhances work-in-progress (WIP) productivity and cuts the cost of the finished goods. 3] Enables the real-time monitoring of production, order completion, and distribution processes and their degree of efficiency. 4] Improves profitably and ability to meet demand rapidly and reduces inventory costs. 5] Reduces labour costs by eliminating manual steps. 6] Increases order and shipping accuracy by helping to ensure that orders are shipped complete, error-free, and on time, which thereby increases customer satisfaction and the likelihood of return orders. 7] Promotes extremely accurate real-time data capture by means of warehouse management systems (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The way forward is to start with the goods-in bay. Goods arrive with shipping labels, but they are often poor in quality and information. It would be best to create a new 'identity badge' for all goods received at this point. All the relevant information that you have on the goods delivered can be put of an RFID tag and affixed to the pallet, the crate or even the goods themselves.

Now these items can be added to stock and the computer will always be able to divulge what the items are in the box, how many of them there are and where they are located in the warehouse.

The simple procedure of creating an RFID tag at the unloading bay and attaching it to the items received can save hours of time wasted checking up on stock levels and thousands of dollars wasted in overstocking.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is currently concerned with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, rfid, shopping, software, stock, technology

Radio frequency identification or RFID is an old idea that has quietly become a big part of everyone's life. RFID has been around for at least 90 years and was initially put into practice about 70 years, but not many people realized it. These days, you yourself are most likely scanned every day by an RFID reader and the items you buy are certainly scanned at least once a week.

So what is RFID? Well, you can think of it as the update of the bar code although in fact, it is older than the bar code by 50 or 60 years. Bar codes were developed in order to integrate stock control with point of sales processing.

Everyone has seen this and is used to it: the sales clerk at the cash register takes the items from your trolley one at a time, looks for the bar code, flashes a light or a bar code reader over it and the cost of the article is added to your receipt.

What you do not see is that the computerized stock records for that item are lowered by one and the sales price is recorded along side it. That procedure worked well for 40 years, but now there is a need for more data to be recorded than a bar code can accommodate and there is need for greater stock control and even more speed at the till Nobody has any time anymore.

Enter RFID, an old technology brought back to life. RFID is the technology that they used to put in Second World War aircraft in order to identify friendly aircraft to the RADAR-controlled anti-aircraft guns. The same equipment, basically, that they still use in aircraft today to identify it to air traffic control. The difference is that until pretty recently, these radio signal emitters or transponders were as big as a suitcase and cost a lot of money.

These days they are as big as the smallest coin in your pocket and cost about five cents. They triumph over the bar code because they can store loads of information, such as where and when and by whom an article was manufactured; how much it cost and how much it should be sold for; its colour, weight and description; which shelf and in which shop it should be stacked .... ad infinitum. The store owner can write anything on that tag using an RFID printer.

And when it comes to the check out... No more reading each separate item by hand, because each RFID chip or tag, as they are called in the industry, sends out its own data on its own exclusive radio frequency, so as long as the RFID scanner is within three or four feet of the trolley, it knows what is in there instantaneously. No more unloading, scanning and refilling the trolley.

In fact, no more check out clerk. Most people pay with a credit or debit card these days anyway, so as you walk past the RFID reader with your basket, you are scanned; you swipe your credit card through another reader; if you are satisfied with it, you authorize the payment and the barrier lifts for you to carry on to your car. You only have to have a check out clerk for the shoppers who want to pay with cash. Cheques are being abolished soon anyway.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, rfid, shopping, software, stock, technology

In order to demonstrate how RFID tags can greatly influence the fortunes of a business for the better, we can take a look at a theoretical case below. Let us take the example of a furniture maker that specializes in the supply furniture to a hotel chain.

This may sound like an example with no relevance to typical small businesses, but in fact, hotel chains are awfully choosy and have no loyalty, so if you can satisfy these people, you can please anyone.

The principal requirements of the hotel chain are that orders be met and on time, the quality of the supplier's goods has already been determined by means of enforced ISO 9000 quality control and factory visits.

The hotel furniture manufacturer decides to use passive RFID tags to track its items from the point of manufacture to the point of delivery, that is the hotel or its depot.

Under previous circumstances the producer had employed a few personnel to walk around with bar code readers and clip boards carrying out quality control and following the fulfillment of orders.

The problem was that the system was still subject to human error and items still went missing, which lead to management compensating by over manufacturing and over stocking 'just in case'.

That is a common enough scenario., but the difficulties are multiplied when you think of all the different articles of furniture that are involved in a hotel room, bathroom or lobby and if they are kept in a 200,000 square foot warehouse. Goods get lost, forklift drivers make mistakes, people forget to fill in inventory forms, get sick and take holidays.

In short, running a warehouse like this is a nightmare with too much stress on key employees. It sometimes leads to imperfect deliveries or worse, incomplete delivery tickets. Sometimes the order might be complete but the hotel would think it was not because the delivery ticket was incorrect.

If this company were to initiate RFID asset control they could affix an RFID tag to completed sticks of furniture. The tag would say where it is, what it is, whom it is for, when it has to be delivered and what else makes up part of the order. The tag is being read continuously by the warehouse's RFID readers forewarning when orders are running late or are still incomplete.

Not only that but the tag can say what else has to be manufactured and whether the object itself has passed quality control. It can also tell you which defects someone has found with it. In short, instead of a couple of people traipsing around the stockroom hoping that they have covered everything, you could have radio sensors reading every tag in a warehouse the size of a football pitch, reporting back to a central computer where the storehouse manager can have access to real time intelligence, not just the state of affairs at close of business the previous day.

This should enhance the manager's chance to manage, cut down on waste, ensure complete orders delivered on time and so higher levels of customer satisfaction, which should lead to more repeat orders.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on several topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

categories: rfid,shopping,products,food,stock,animals,pets,technology,equipment,computer,gps,hardware,software,other

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, rfid, shopping, software, stock, technology

Most of the most recent outlets and the larger chain stores use RFID cash registers. RFID cash registers are linked to an RFID reader which is used to scan the article being bought to obtain the price, record the sale and control the stock. This method of recording the sale makes it quicker at the check out. It also reduces the human error factor.

Radio Frequency Identification or RFID is similar to utilizing bar codes but they can hold a lot more information and they are usually not taken off after purchase, because passive RFID tags can be really small and can be put under labels on cans of food or sewn into clothing at the point of manufacture. Every tag responds in a different frequency, so the items in a shopping trolley do not even have to be removed to be counted, which is the not the situation with bar codes.

It is improbable that bar codes will disappear any time soon because they are so widely used, but the fate of bar codes is surely sealed. They will be supplanted. Bar code readers are hand-held, but RFID readers can be in a fixed location, scanning the shopping trolley from about three feet away.

RFID cash registers are bad news for check out clerks, because they can work far more rapidly than conventional cash registers. You will not have to unload items and check out clerks will not have to handle every item and punch in the prices, so there will be no errors either.

In the future, stores will only have to have check out clerks for patrons who wish to pay with cash. Most people pay with a credit or debit card these days, so all you would need is a RFID cash register and a credit card swiper so that the customers can pay.

A superstore that now provides twenty points of sale with twenty check out clerks, could have eighteen RFID cash registers for those with credit cards and two traditional cash registers for customers paying with cash.

In fact, because RFID cash registers are so much faster, the superstore could most likely do away with five of those points of sale as well without any reduction in service or quality to the clientele.

For the merchant, the cost of installing RFID cash registers is not insubstantial, but the costs will be recouped pretty swiftly by the reduction in wages.

RFID cash registers offer higher levels of stock control than bar code readers because the RFID tag can hold a lot more information than a bar code. Stock control is clearly important, because a merchant neither wants to run out of an article nor have too many of an article tying up money.

RFID cash registers, linked to a computer, can automatically show you which items are selling the best and which goods are producing the most profit for you. This makes it simple to order more of the items at the top of the list and fewer of the goods at the bottom.

In fact, even ordering could be automatic according to a set algorithm. The only possible drawback with RFID cash registers is an interruption of the power supply., but you could reduce that problem by having a support generator.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

categories: rfid,shopping,products,food,stock,animals,pets,technology,equipment,computer,gps,hardware,software,other

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, rfid, shopping, software, stock, technology

You have heard of RFID tags, right? The technology that is in most ID cards so that administration or security knows whether employees are in the building or not? Well they are being put into far more than ID cards these days.

They are going into the clothing of a lot of retail stores and even behind the labels on some tin cans. The situation is sure to mushroom.

They are the new generation of bar codes, but unlike bar codes, they can talk back and they can be so minute that you do not even know that you are wearing one. I say 'wearing one' because at the moment they are mostly being put into garments, but the day is not far away when they will be under every label of every tin of food that you buy.

Some stores have even gone that far already. Look next time you go to the superstore. Is the check-out operative scanning a bar code or just scanning 'something'? If there is no bar code to scan, they are looking for the RFID tag.

However, if you had a bar code on your new shirt, you would remove it before wearing it, but an RFID tag is so small and so well concealed, that you may never find it.

Why would that matter, you may be asking yourself? Well, we are told that it does not matter; that people who do worry are just being paranoid, but others perceive it as the thin edge of the wedge.

You see, in a city, you are never that far from an RFID reader, so really, if you walk past one, your shirt could be crying out: 'He bought me from Wal-Mart'. It could also be saying: 'I only cost 4.99'.

If you do not see that as a problem, all well and good, but what if you are walking down the high street and a loud speaker from a shop shouts at you: 'People who buy their shirts from Wal-Mart normally love Wimpey Burgers!'.

You may think that that is a twist of fate or you may have forgotten that you purchased that shirt from Wal-Mart, but the tag sewn into your shirt will never forget and it will tell every RFID reader that asks it. Is that fair? You have now become a walking advertisement.

Of course, RFID tags were not brought in for this reason. They are used ostensibly to help trace merchandise from manufacturer to consumer - point out. They are very useful for tracing stock in a warehouse, but the fact is that these live beacons of their provenance are not turned off at the point of sale. If they were, perhaps there would not be such a hoo-hah being raised about them.

Is there a reason to be concerned about these tags? Probably not, but then that does not mean that there never will be. What if you were on holiday somewhere and there was a smart bomb linked to an RFID scanner concealed waiting for an American and your shirt was screaming out: 'I am a shirt. I was bought for 4.99 at Wal-Mart, store ID 0001, New York, USA'?

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is now concerned with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

categories: rfid,radio,products,food,stock,animals,pets,technology,equipment,computer,gps,hardware,software,other

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, radio, rfid, software, stock, technology

As you perhaps already know, RFID is an acronym for 'Radio Frequency Identification' - it is the thing that makes ID tags work - but you probably only started hearing about it over the last couple of years. So, how much do you know about RFID? In this piece of writing, I want to take a short look at the history of this seemingly new invention, which has entered almost every facet of a city-dweller's life and that of many livestock farmers as well.

The start of it all was in 1915, say some, when the British come up with a system called IFF, which is short for 'Identification: Friend or Foe'. Whoever invented it, the first known installation of the IFF transponder was into the FuG German aircraft in 1940 in the course of the Second World War.

However, IFF does not identify enemy aircraft, it can only identify friendly aircraft. All others have to be treated with suspicion. The same type of technology is still in use in military and civilian aircraft today. The British managed to decode the FuG's signals and reply properly, giving them a false positive, which gave them the advantage in a dog fight.

At the end of the war and the commencement of the Cold War, Leon Theremin invented a device for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves and other audio information. It is not genuine RFID, but it is credited with being a predecessor of RFID, because it was a passive device which was activated by an outside resource.

In 1948, Harry Stockman wrote a paper called: "Communication by Means of Reflected Power", in which he stated: "... considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored".

This was true. The difficulties were essentially threefold: the devices needed a lot of power to work properly; they were too big for use in anything but large items like aircraft and they were very expensive. However, people could already imagine uses for the technology when these three problems had been surmounted.

(In 2009, researchers at Bristol University stuck RFID devices to live ants to track their movements).

The first modern ancestor of the RFID device was something that Mario Cardullo demonstrated to the New York Port Authority in 1971. It was a passive transponder which transmitted information employing power provided by an external resource. It's proposed use was to identify ships to the Port Authority for the purpose of collecting toll fees.

Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Freyman demonstrated a set-up in 1974 which used RFID tags. This has become the foundation of the system which is now extensively used all over the world to collect toll fees on motorways and in car parks.

Charles Walton was granted the first patent to include the acronym RFID in 1983.

The principal user of RFID tags is the US Department of Defense and after that the civil aviation industry, although the manufacturing industry is catching up fast with RFID tags being used to track goods from manufacture to point-of-sale.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

categories: rfid,radio,products,food,stock,animals,pets,technology,equipment,computer,gps,hardware,software,other

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, radio, rfid, software, stock, technology

RFID is an acronym for 'Radio Frequency Identification'. It involves the utilization of an article usually made of plastic or metal to identify an item in a similar way to bar codes identify things. In fact, they are utilized in a very similar manner to bar codes and, at least for the foreseeable future, are usually used in conjunction with bar codes.

However, RFID tags are a great deal more adaptable than a piece of paper with a few black stripes on it. RFID tags can be and are being sewn into clothing and inserted under the skins of animals and humans for ease of tracking. Many of the items you buy in supermarkets these days have RFID tags concealed in them, but do not try looking for them because they can be tiny. They could also be under the labels of those tins of beans on your shelf.

An RFID tag is deployed to be able to follow an item from manufacturer to consumer, but especially when it is in the warehouse or supermarket waiting to be sold. A tag reader will be able to transmit the tag's information back to a computer to notify management that something is close to its sell-by-date, for example.

Tags in livestock permit the slaughterhouse to be able to track the animal back to a farm and hand this information on to the butcher. An RFID tag under your dog's skin or your car's bonnet will permit it to be found if lost or stolen.

There are essentially two types of RFID tags: the passive kind and the active kind and there is a hybrid as well. The passive tag is similar to a bar code. It bears the same information and then more besides. Similar to a bar code, it can do nothing on its own, but when it is read it will divulge its data. These tag readers give the tag sufficient power to be able to reflect the information back to it.

The active tags have a battery and a transmitter constructed into them, so that they can actively transmit the data all the time and the hybrids will only transmit when 'switched on' by a tag reader.

There is still some dispute about how far away a tag reader can read a tag. In the case of a passive tag, it depends on the power that the reader can supply over a long distance. Most are designed to work over only a few inches or feet, but more powerful ones could be constructed. Active and hybrid tags actively transmit, so they can be read from 100 metres (300 feet) or more.

These tags have been around for a very long time in one form or another, but certainly since the Second World War, when they were used to identify home-coming British planes to save them from the RADAR-directed anti-aircraft guns.

The concern as far as many organizations are concerned, is that technology has progressed so much that the tags can be practically invisible and the readers could be anywhere, which invokes concerns for personal privacy.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is currently involved with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

categories: rfid,radio,products,food,stock,animals,pets,technology,equipment,computer,gps,hardware,software,other

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, computer, equipment, Food, gps, hardware, Pets, products, radio, rfid, software, stock, technology

A storm can be distressing for your outdoor fish, especially for large koi carp, which, being large, possibly do not have many areas to hide. However, if you have designed your koi fish pond well, you will have taken this into consideration when your built the pond. Similarly, the pond should be deep enough for your fish to be able to get well below the choppy surface layer.

If you prepared for the storm, you probably put a net over the fish pond, so the first thing you ought to do after the storm is clear up any fallen debris and take away the net, so that you can get a good look at your fish and what happened to them. They may be a bit stressed, so move unhurriedly and try hard not to frighten them. Stress is a killer in the animal world as well as in ours.

Did you take the added precaution of sand-bagging the edges of your pond to stop it over-flowing and the fish swimming away? If so, take away the sand bags, so that you can get a closer look.

Now you can get a good look at the upheaval, if there is any. Use a net to quietly skim off any leaves that have blown under the netting and onto the pond. If any plants have been uprooted, put them back where they should be. In general, put the pond back as it used to be, so that the fish feel at home. Again, move unhurriedly and try not to put your fish under any more stress.

If you have to carry out major structural repairs, you could put your koi in a child's plastic paddling pool until you can sort the issue out. Put the pool in a shaded area and fold the netting over it several times so that the fish can not get out and cats and birds cannot get in. If you can aerate the pool with a pump so much the better.

Put a few plants in there with them for shelter and feed sparingly. if the repairs will take a long time, you could ask your local pet store to take them away for a week or whatever. You will have to pay board and lodgings, but it is preferable to losing your prized koi carp.

Once any repairs have been carried out, you ought to check the water quality, which could have been affected by debris falling into the pond or by your repairs. Rain, especially acid rain, can have quite an effect, especially if it rained for a long time.

First check the water for nitrates. If the levels are unacceptable (see the testing kit for details), you should stabilize them. If the levels are very high, first remove the plants from the water.

Then test the KH levels. If they are low, say, below 100, then you could add a cup of baking soda per 1,000 gallons of water and check again. Whatever you do, the quickest way to de-stress your fish is to restore their environment to what it used to be with sparkling water to swim in.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is now concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

categories: fish,pond,water,pets,animals,home improvements,recreation,family,outdoors,other,uncategorised,reference and education,equipment,happiness

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, equipment, family, Fish, happiness, home improvements, outdoors, Pets, pond, recreation, reference and education, uncategorised, water

We are often asked, "How many jumps should I start with?" You can never have too many single jumps to practice agility. A good starting place is four jumps. This is the absolute minimum number of jumps that we recommend.

With four jumps you can learn your dog a lot of different skills, exercises and drills. With this number of jumps you can work on jump grid and short jump chute. It is also possible to setup a "box", so you can practice collection, handling and 270 degree jumps.

You can teach your dog jumping left and right. You can be outside the box and send your dog or you can handle from the inside of the box. Your jumps can be setup in a horizontal line, so that you can practice serpentines and treadles.

After the four jumps come the eight jumps. In this variation you can setup two boxes and have one introductory jump. Now you can train your dog with multiplied drills. And your jump grids can also be of suggested size and quantity of jumps.

Another option is to setup the jumps in circles with jump bars at a 90 degree angle to the circle or on the bounds of the circle. With this pattern you can train a lot of various skills.

Now it is time to start thinking about double jumps and triple jumps. It is fine enough to setup two or three single jumps, but double and triple jumps is of much more value to the dog agility practice. It is not unusual to see a dog doing a clean course until the last triple jump; and then lose it all, because it is not ready for it.

If you really want to be ahead of the pack, you should have two sets up eight jumps. Because you can keep the jump grip at all times, it is the ultimate in training. The jumps can be separated from the course work. And when you then includes your double and triple jumps, it is possible the practice all the jumping drills and skills to get the "Qs".

Martin Elmer is the editor of Hundefan - a website about ting til hunde. Here you can also read about toej til hunde.

categories: dogs,agility,dog agility,dog training,training,practice,equipment,agility equipment,dog agility equipment,jumps,pets

Written by Martin Elmer using tags: agility, agility equipment, agility-pet-urns, dog agility, dog agility equipment, dog training, dog-agility-starter-kit, Dogs, equipment, jumps, Pets, practice, training