If not, would it be possible? And if yes, how?
—Name withheld
———
There are a few products currently on the market. A company called iAutomate has developed the HomeSeer RFID Starter Kit, which includes a long-range reader and software that can be configured to trigger a number of tasks: It could send you an e-mail at work when your child returns home from school, open your garage door and turn on the TV upon detecting the presence of your car, or open the other garage door and turn on the CD player when your spouse comes home (see RFID-Enable Your Home).
U Grok It started out focusing on solving household organization problems for busy mothers and other individuals, but the solution is intended for a much larger audience: small businesses that need to manage inventory or assets inexpensively (see U Grok It Wants to Help Consumers and Small Businesses Find Their Stuff).
And we recently wrote about Blacksocks, a Swiss company that provides a subscription service consisting of replacement black dress socks. The firm offers a product called the Smarter Socks system, which employs button-shaped 13.56 MHz high-frequency (HF) RFID tags, one sewn onto each sock, and a small RFID reader paired to an Apple iPhone via a Bluetooth connection. The solution allows a user to quickly pair socks that were purchased together (see RFID Plays Matchmaker to Socks and RFID’s Killer App: Sock Sorting).
I’m sure there are others. Readers can post information about other systems below.
—Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal