The following are news announcements made during the week of Aug. 16.
RSI EPC-Enables RFID Software
RSI ID Technologies, a Chula Vista, Calif.-based systems integrator, has launched an upgrade to its Flexolution RFID software that is designed to share data over the EPC Network. Flexolution, an application that runs on the Internet or a company’s intranet, can associate unique items with cases, cases with pallets and pallets with cargo containers. The software can be used to track items, and it has an event manager that can trigger alerts when, for instance, a shipment arrives. The new version can generate EPCs and synchronize product data with the EPC Network, a system being developed by EPCglobal to share product information securely.
SATO Offers Class 1 Label Printers
SATO International has introduced a line of printers fitted with an RFID reader module from Alien Technology. Initially, three SATO printers will be fitted with these modules: the CL408e and CL412e and M-8485Se. The M-8485Se is a print engine that can be used in print-and-apply labelers from other companies. The RFID-enabled printers can write data to Class 1 UHF EPC tags. Defective tags are automatically detected and X-ed out to prevent them from being used.
New Active Asset Tracking System
Sense Holdings, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based provider of biometrically secured authentication and identification systems, has introduced the Sensetag system, a combination of active (battery-powered) RFID tags and software to track people and assets. The company says its active tags can be read up to 400 feet away, making them useful for securing assets in large areas or facilities. Information is transmitted from the asset to the monitoring software via readers placed in strategic locations. The company plans to market the system to airports, car dealerships, museums, chemical plants, theme parks, hospitals and government agencies. The tags can be portable in the form of a key fob, wristband or ID badge, or they can be securely fastened directly to valuable assets.
Dynasys Opens Online “RFID Superstore”
Dynasys, a Clearwater, Fl.-based distributor of RFID technology, has opened an online RFID Superstore to offer information and sell products online. Dynasys has been the national distributor and technical support center for Texas Instruments’ RFID products for the past four years. But the site features 125 kHz, 134.2 kHz, and 13.56 MHz tags and readers from a number of other vendors, including Datamax, Feig, Secura Key and X-ident, as well as RFID label printers from Zebra Technologies. Dynasys’s RFID Superstore sells 315 MHz active and semi-active tags from Axcess, and 2.45 GHz technology from IDmicro. It will offer UHF passive UHF EPC tags, once Texas Instruments produces tags based on EPCglobal’s Gen 2 standard. Dynasys recommends that end users use the site to gather information about the various products, make a shopping list and then call a Dynasys engineer, who can make sure the customer has the right components to assemble a system.
RFID Alternative for Pharmaceutical Drugs
Secure Symbology, a startup based in New York City, has released a bar-coding system that it claims is an alternative to RFID technology. The company’s Electronic Sequence Code System uses serialized 2D composite bar codes to encode individual product information on labels that are smaller than a standard bar code label. The company says these labels can be applied on individual unit-dose drug products or larger packages at current production-line speeds. Secure Symbology says that its system delivers the benefits of individual product serialization without the cost of RFID infrastructure and middleware. The Company is initially targeting the pharmaceutical industry because it says the ESC System can provide track-and-trace, anticounterfeiting and electronic-pedigree capabilities.