The following are news announcements made during the past week by the following organizations:
Keonn Technologies;
Adobe;
MTI Wireless Edge;
DuPont Microcircuit Materials;
Confidex; and
Haldor Advanced Technologies.
Keonn Announces New Reader Antenna, Tag-Encoding Station
Keonn Technologies has announced a new ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID reader antenna and a new encoding station for paper and hard RFID UHF tags. The Advantenna-p14 is a new compact reader antenna with circular polarization and a radiation pattern characterized by a 30-degree beam width in the endfire direction and a 90-degree beam width in the broadside direction. This radiation pattern makes the Advantennap-14 suitable for a variety of RFID applications, the company reports, including loss-prevention systems, portals and tunnels. The reader antenna operates in the 865 to 868 MHz and 902 to 928 MHz bands, with an operating detection distance of up to 4.5 meters (14.8 feet). It has an 8.1 dBi gain and measures 557 millimeters by 137 millimeters by 3 millimeters (21.9 inches by 5.4 inches by 0.13 inch), excluding the connector. The reader antenna weighs 460 grams (16.2 ounces). Keonn says 26 of its Advantenna-p14 antennas are being used at Atlanta’s College Football Hall of Fame, which opened two months ago (see College Football Hall of Fame to Kick Off With RFID).
Keonn also has announced the AdvanStation, an encoding station for paper and hard RFID UHF tags that includes an internal RFID reader, an RFID antenna, an embedded computer and software, a bar-code reader, and light and acoustic indicators. It is designed to easily and quickly encode hundreds or thousands of RFID tags at retail stores, offices, distribution centers, warehouses or other spaces, according to the company. The AdvanStation functions as a standalone encoder, and does not require any connection to an external computer or to the Internet, nor any installation. It employs GS1’s Serialized Global Trade Item Number (SGTIN) standard for generating the Electronic Product Code (EPC) serial number that it encodes to each RFID tag, and can configure the tags to have password protection. In this way, the company reports, the tags cannot be rewritten without the password, thereby increasing the overall application’s security.
Adobe Adds Beacon Support to Adobe Marketing Cloud, Unveils Consumer Survey on Beacons
Adobe has unveiled what it calls “Intelligent Location Marketing” capabilities for Adobe Marketing Cloud, the company’s set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting, Web and app experience management and cross-channel campaign management solutions. The new mobile capabilities include support for Bluetooth Smart (also called Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE) beacons to deliver highly personalized mobile experiences. According to Adobe, Intelligent Location Marketing helps companies engage their customers with relevant content and messages, based on a user’s proximity to beacons.
The company reports that Adobe Marketing Cloud is used by more than two thirds of all Fortune 50 companies, and handles 2.5 trillion mobile transactions annually. Users include A+E Networks, Ancestry.com, Apollo Education Group, CBS Interactive, First Energy, NBCUniversal, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Wyndham Hotel Group. With Adobe Marketing Cloud’s new mobile capabilities, marketers now can create, manage, publish and measure in-app messages to engage with app users, and the content can be triggered by location data culled from Bluetooth beacons, as well as from user behaviors and lifecycle metrics. In addition, the updated marketing solution includes a new digital content editor (DCE) in Adobe Campaign that allows marketers to create responsive design e-mails to ensure that the messages are rendered appropriately. Marketers can edit, personalize and preview how the content will look across multiple devices. Using beacon interactions, including promotional offers, lets marketers send personalized follow-up e-mails to customers, based on recent store visits or other app experiences. Marketers can also use the collected location data to refine audience segmentation for future campaigns.
Other new features in the marketing solution include updates to the Adobe Experience Manager, designed to make the management and testing of mobile apps performance easier and faster. To help improve advertising campaigns, Adobe Media Optimizer now offers multi-dimensional portfolio modeling. Marketers can use automated mobile bid adjustments (MBAs) to place search ads across mobile devices; MBAs allow marketers to adjust bids within milliseconds, based on the targeted device, audience, time of day and location, so that they can more reliably forecast expected click-throughs, the cost per click (CPC) and revenue for search ads by specific devices. A new native Adobe Social App allows brands to view and manage their social activities on the go.
The company’s Adobe Digital Index (ADI) team recently reported strong adoption of location-based technologies, such as Bluetooth beacons. According to a survey of 400 U.S. consumers who own a smartphone or tablet, and who plan to shop online during the holidays, that 34 percent of respondents reported having received a marketing promotion based on their location, while another 21 percent were unsure. Among the 136 respondents who reported having received such promotions, 71 percent said they liked having ads personalized, though they had different opinions regarding the quality of current personalization efforts:
• 20 percent said they like such ads, but felt they are “not done well enough today.”
• 30 percent like it, and feel that today’s efforts are “as tailored to me as they need to be.”
• 20 percent feel present personalization efforts are too intrusive.
• 29 percent do not think ads should be personalized at all.
The survey also found that consumers are open to beacons, with 55 percent finding them useful to receive promotions on their mobile device while they are in a physical store.
“Beacons aren’t just changing the retail environment,” explained Tamara Gaffney, a principal analyst at ADI, on the Adobe Blogs website. “They’re being used in other venues as well, such as travel and hospitality and sports stadiums. Location awareness is coming from everywhere, since people have their phones everywhere they go.”
MTI Wireless Launches New RFID Antenna Line for Toll Road Applications
MTI Wireless Edge, a developer of flat-panel antennas, has announced a new line of RFID reader antennas for tolling applications. The new antennas are built to sustain extremely harsh conditions, according to the company, and include high-gain linear antennas with a relatively narrow AZ beam (AZ is the azimuth, or the pointing angle of the antenna’s beam). They are available for use in the 902 to 928 MHz and 865 to 870 MHz frequency bands, as well as 5.8 GHz, and include a range of models that vary in coverage area.
The MT – 243024/NH is a 14 dBi flat panel antenna that measures 550 millimeters by 650 millimeters by 40 millimeters (21.7 inches by 25.6 inches by 1.6 inches) and weighs 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds). The MT – 243023/NH is a 14.5 dBi flat panel antenna measuring 550 millimeters by 900 millimeters by 40 millimeters (21.7 inches by 35.4 inches by 1.6 inches) and weighing 9 kilograms (19.8 pounds). Both models feature a plastic radome and a base plate made of aluminum with a chemical conversion coating.
DuPont Microcircuit Materials Introduces Pure Copper Conductive Ink
DuPont Microcircuit Materials (MCM), a supplier of specialized ceramic, polymer thick film compositions (PTF) and GreenTape low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) materials, and announced its first pure copper conductive ink for photonic curing. The DuPont PE510 copper conductor, designed as an alternative to silver conductor inks for a variety of possible applications, is the latest product in a suite of conductive ink materials specifically tailored for use in certain types of antenna, membrane touch switch (MTS), RFID and consumer electronic applications, the company reports.
The new copper ink is designed to allow customers greater flexibility in design, MCM reports, and enables conductivity on various types of substrates. The PE510 copper conductor provides a means to rapidly process low-lamp-voltage copper metallization circuit designs on a wide range of plastic substrates, including FR-4, PVC, polyimide films (such as DuPont Kapton) and PET. It can be processed using high-speed photonic curing equipment and features a long lamp life. Other features, the company notes, include advanced adhesion and processing, as well as printed line and space resolution.
Confidex Expands Line of Printable, Flexible On-metal Adhesive Labels, Intros New Hard Tag
Confidex has unveiled a new hard tag and added new tags to its Silverline portfolio of printable, flexible, on-metal adhesive labels that the company launched in 2013 (see Confidex Releases Printable, Flexible On-Metal RFID Label).
The new Silverline Slim and Silverline Micro are passive EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags designed for applications in which size is limited, such as the tracking of pipes, cables, electrical devices or tools. Both labels can also be attached to curved surfaces, like liquid bottles and metallic cylinders, without affecting their performance. The new tags are available with Impinj‘s Monza 4QT chip or, upon special request, Monza 4e chip. The Slim measures 110 millimeters by 13 millimeters by 0.8 millimeter (4.33 inches by 0.51 inch by 0.03 inch) and offers a read range of 10 to 13 feet. The Micro measures 55 millimeters by 14 millimeters by 0.8 millimeter (2.17 inches by 0.55 inch by .03 inch) and supports a 3- to 4-foot read range.
The new Silverline Slim is being used by postal company bPost for its CycloSafe service, an RFID-enabled system that allows postal workers in Belgian cities to forward data regarding bicycles and their location using a handheld RFID reader and UHF passive tags on the bikes (see Belgian Postal Workers Deliver Info About Missing Bikes). In the CycloSafe service, Confidex explains, two Silverline Slim tags are installed on the bike’s frame, in order to enable the easy and remote identification of a stolen or misplaced bicycle.
Confidex has also announced that all tags in its Silverline portfolio are compatible with Zebra Technologies‘ ZT400, R110Xi4 and RZ series RFID printers. “Confidex Silverline is the first all-surface label family designed specifically to be compatible with Zebra RFID printers,” said Michael Fein, Zebra Technologies’ senior product manager, in a prepared statement. “In particular, the new Silverline Slim and Micro labels offer new solutions for space constrained applications.”
Confidex’s new hard tag, the Carrier Tough II, is a passive UHF RFID tag especially designed for tracking and tracing all types of returnable transit items. The Carrier Tough II, which measures 115 millimeters by 30 millimeters by 3.9 millimeters (4.53 inches by 1.18 inches by 0.15 inch), features an ultra-thin design that, according to Confidex, does not compromise its robustness. The tag is available with a Monza 4QT chip or, upon special request, a Monza 4e chip. It has a read range of up to 12 meters (40 feet) on metal, the company reports, and up to 11 meters (26 feet) when attached to other types of materials.
Haldor Adds Analysis and Reporting Module to Its RFID-enabled Surgical Solution
Haldor Advanced Technologies, a provider of RFID-enabled surgical instrument tracking solutions, has announced the ORLocate View, a business analysis and reporting module aimed at hospitals and sterile service providers with hidden, under-utilized resources.
The module provides sterile processing department managers with real-time situation awareness. It utilizes scorecard and key performance indicator (KPI) methods to highlight potential bottlenecks, missing items and malfunctioning machines, according to Haldor, and is designed to help medical facilities optimize resources. ORLocate View features a variety of reports, the company says, and users can easily generate new reports, as well as data-mine the system up to transaction and item levels.
The new module works with Haldor’s ORLocate system that uses RFID tags and readers to track and trace surgical sponges and instruments, in order to help hospitals ensure that equipment and materials are not misplaced during surgery, either within a patient or in waste containers, and to track the use, maintenance and status of instruments so as to make sure they are properly handled, sterilized and used. ORLocate tags and readers operate in the high-frequency (HF) 13.56 MHz band, according to the ISO 15693 RFID standard.
ORLocate View’s management dashboard is configured per customer requirements and use cases, and the standard display includes a Workflow tab for viewing production volumes, queues at the various workstations, machine status, utilization level, and additional red light indications, such as missing instruments, batch failures and more. A Machines tab provides summaries of production floor machines by zone and per machine, as well as current status and maintenance cycles, while a Surgical Sets tab lets hospitals examine a summary of loaned sets, issues with missing items and more. The module also features a Quality Management tab for viewing key quality-management and quality-control metrics.