The following are news announcements made during the past week.
Dayton Recycles With RFID
RFID manufacturer and services provider Alien Technology has announced that it and systems integrator CDO Technologies have provided an RFID-enabled trash-tracking system to the city of Dayton, Ohio. The project’s goal is to lower the city’s recycling costs and increase participation in its existing recycling efforts. Dayton, which has a population of more than 200,000, has been challenged with the increasing costs associated with sending refuse to landfills, according to Alien Technology—costs equaling more than $30 per ton from the city’s 67,000 homes. The solution, deployed by CDO, consists of EPC Gen 2 passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags attached to the recycling bins, as well as CDO’s High Value Asset Tracking (HVAT) platform and Alien’s ALR-9900+ readers installed on trucks used for collecting recyclable trash. The HVAT platform integrates with the Alien hardware and parses the data culled by the RFID technology, in order to generate reports and provide Dayton’s officials with better visibility into its recycling efforts; that information can then be used to help the city plan its routes, schedules, budgets and usage rates. According to Robert Zielinski, CDO Technologies’ director of commercial marketing, the solution also leverages a global positioning satellite (GPS) unit attached to each recycling truck’s tip arm. That allows for the capture of both the bins’ tag numbers and the GPS coordinates of the location where the bin was emptied. The information is then stored on an on-board CPU, Zielinski explains, and is automatically uploaded to the city’s server when a wireless connection is established on the city’s network. Dayton’s officials claim that the RFID-based program has resulted in a 40 percent increase in recycling participation, Alien reports, as well as an increase in recycled material from 200 to 535 tons, during just the first few months of operation. The program has also allowed the city to restructure routes, renegotiate recycling rates and balance staffing, the company adds, leading to a projected return on investment in less than 12 months, and an annual savings of more than $100,000.
Mammoth Mountain Plans Mammoth RFID Installation
Mammoth Mountain, a ski resort in California, has kicked off a five-year enhancement plan this winter season that includes what it claims is the largest RFID gate system for ski resorts in North America. The resort installed a total of 68 RFID gates across 19 lifts throughout the summer of 2011, and expects to be ready for the opening day of the 2011/12 season, scheduled for Nov.10, 2011. Mammoth Mountain’s RFID technology was provided by Axess North America, the North American division of Axess AG, an Austrian provider of secure and customized solutions in ticketing and admission management. The firm is using Axess North America’s AX500 SmartGate with a gantry mount, a double antenna and a flap gate; the system supports the ISO 15693 standard. The gantry posts, mounted on both sides of each lane, are equipped with antennas on both sides. Two AX500 Flap modules, mounted at the left and right posts, open automatically when presented with a valid lift pass containing an embedded 13.56 passive RFID inlay, and the opening of the flap arms serves as a clear signal to the skiers or snowboarders to proceed. The ski resort is implementing the new RFID-enabled system to reduce wait times at lift and ticket-window lines. Using the RFID-enabled MyMammoth passes, which can be reloaded with lift-access credits online or over the phone, guests can bypass ticket windows altogether and head straight to the lifts. The RFID gates being installed are on a more flexible gantry system capable of rising and lowering 8 vertical feet, in order to accommodate the rising and falling snowpack experienced throughout the winter season. Previously, the resort reports, RFID gantry systems were only capable of 6 feet of vertical movement, but due to the large amounts of snow that Mammoth Mountain receives—as evidenced by the 660 inches that fell during the 2010/11 winter season—additional vertical movement was required. Other improvements that skiers can expect to see include a new Doppelmayr high-speed quad chairlift to replace Chair 5; a fixed-grip, 3-seat lift; new products, programs and guest-service initiatives; and new dining options for children at all food venues.
NephSystem Technologies Unveils Active RFID Ultra-Long-Range Tag
NephSystem Technologies, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, has announced the completion of its 2.45 GHz IP67-rated heavy-duty active RFID tag, which the company says is designed to endure exposure to extreme environmental and physical conditions. The NSAT-704 tag can be placed on any type of surface, NephSystem reports, including large metal objects, without significant performance degradation. When used with the firm’s infrastructure products, such as its NSAR-800 reader, a customer can create a system for tracking, locating and securing inventory and other assets placed in areas exposed to extreme weather conditions and physical stress. When utilized with the NSAR-800 interrogator, the new tag supports a read distance up to 1,500 meters (4,921 feet), according to the company. The NSAT-704 tag employs industrial PVC housing, and has an IP67 protection rating, making it impervious to water and dust. It contains a 0.13um CMOS integrated circuit (IC), offers ultra-low power consumption and has a battery life of up to six years. The NSAT-704 tag’s anti-collision feature allows for a simultaneous read of up to 200 tags. The tag has an internal 1,600-mAh lithium battery; measures 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) long, 5 centimeters (2 inches) wide and 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inch) in height; weighs 82 grams (2.9 ounces); and can operate in temperatures ranging from -40 degrees to +158 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees to +70 degrees Celsius).
SCM Microsystems Intros UHF Desktop Reader
SCM Microsystems, a provider of solutions for secure access, secure identity and secure exchange—and a business unit of Identive Group—has announced the launch of a new ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) desktop reader designed especially for retail and specialty tracking environments. Sold under SCM’s Arygon brand, the AUDR-USB is a compact, desktop package for such close-range applications as point-of-sale (POS) checkout and on-the-shelf inventory management. The reader is compliant with the ISO 18000-6C and EPC Gen 2 standards for passive UHF RFID, and measures 100 millimeters (3.9 inches) long, 62 millimeters (2.4 inches) wide and 12 millimeters (0.5 inch) high. It communicates via a USB device protocol, so it can be easily integrated into existing PC-based tracking systems and POS terminals, according to SCM Microsystems. The AUDR-USB has been tested to comply with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, the company reports. A test and integration kit (AUDR-USB-TIK) that includes a reader, test software and USB source code is available now for application developers and system integrators. “Passive UHF technology is gaining importance for asset management in high-volume applications such as warehouse inventory management and logistics tracking, because of its small form factor and low cost of ownership,” said Michael Ganzera, SCM Microsystems’ VP of business development and marketing, in a prepared statement. “In response to demand from systems integrators for a UHF reader suitable for smaller areas and more targeted reads, we have developed a compact desktop UHF reader that offers short-range reading distance. As the first in a series of planned UHF offerings, this new Arygon reader is an important addition to our portfolio of RFID products and accessories and supports the latest trends and chip generations for UHF desktop applications.”
NFC Forum Publishes New Application-Level Specification
The NFC Forum, an association promoting the adoption of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, has announced that it has released its 16th specification, the Simple NDEF Exchange Protocol (SNEP), an application-level protocol suitable for sending or receiving messages between two NFC-enabled devices. According to the organization, the new specification—an extension of the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF)—is significant because NDEF was previously applicable only to NFC tags in reader-writer mode. Now, the forum indicates, SNEP enables the use of the openly standardized NDEF in peer-to-peer mode, thus enabling a seamless interchange of data. With SNEP, application developers no longer need to concern themselves with how their NDEF data gets transferred between NFC-enabled devices. This capability is similar to the way in which the NFC Forum’s Tag Type specifications encapsulate the differences between communication layers. By providing this capability, the SNEP specification eliminates the difference between reader-writer and peer-to-peer operation modes—a major step toward the global interoperability of NFC applications, according to the NFC Forum. The organization provides two examples of potential applications developed with SNEP. The first is the simplified transfer of contact information, so that one person’s phone could be configured to automatically send business-card information when an NFC peer-to-peer connection is established. The recipient would not need to do anything other than accept the business card and allow it to be entered into his or her phone book. Secondly, SNEP would allow the collection of data from RFID NFC tags on movie posters for later use; a consumer could retrieve and store movie-poster data onto an NFC-enabled phone, while simply passing by that poster. Once home, the consumer could then display that information on a flat-screen TV, and navigate to the advertised films’ Web pages, by simply tapping the phone to an NFC-enabled TV remote control. “By extending NDEF to peer-to-peer communications, our SNEP specification adds to the usability of NFC technology and broadens its possibilities, enabling enterprises to offer new, creative, and appealing applications to businesses and consumers,” said Koichi Tagawa, the NFC Forum’s chairperson, in a prepared statement. “Specification development is an important part of the NFC Forum’s mission; the extensive suite of NFC Forum specifications is testimony to the hard work of our members, whose activity yields benefits for the entire NFC ecosystem. We are grateful to everyone who participated in the effort to deliver SNEP.” Specifically, SNEP allows an application on an NFC-enabled device to exchange NFC NDEF messages with another NFC-enabled device while operating in peer-to-peer mode. The protocol makes use of the NFC Logical Link Control Protocol (LLCP) connection-oriented transport mode to provide a reliable data exchange. SNEP is a request/response protocol, the NFC Forum reports. A SNEP client application sends a request to a SNEP server application to either retrieve data from the server with a GET method or push information to the server using the PUT method. The protocol handles the segmentation and reassembly of large messages, as well as the early cancellation of transfers that would exhaust receiving capabilities. The new SNEP specification, available to the public for download at no charge, was published following an approval ballot held among NFC Forum voting members. Information regarding all NFC Forum specifications can be found here.