Today I ran into some nifty news in the RFID business front, apparently in the realm of cutting edge tracking logistics 2.0. Open source still manage finding its way advancing collaboration of creativity among the tech community. Though this platform might not yet be ready for the enterprise prime time, however it's worth a good look.
OpenBeacon is an open source wireless tracking system for following people around buildings got its first public use last week at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. The creators of the Open Beacon system sold the RFID tags at US$13 each to attendees who volunteered to be tracked during the four-day event. Also Open Beacon worked with partners to create a three dimensional model of the conference center and anyone could use touch-screen monitors that displayed the location of attendees on the model. Touching an attendee on the screen displayed a profile that the person could voluntarily add.
This Initiative is a free design for an active RFID device which operates in the 2.4GHz ISM band. Open Beacon uses chips from Nordic Semiconductor ASA that transmit and receive over the 2.4GHz frequency, which is available for unlicensed use in many countries. The device contains a unique serial number, but may have other information. OpenBeacon is designed as a transceiver device and therefore both transmits and receives radio waves. The intention of this project is to offer a wide range of use cases such as visitor or item tracking and wireless remote control with a free self-contained and low-cost RFID design.
One of the greatest strength in OpenBeacon tag comparing to other Wi-Fi based active RFID tracking system is longer battery life by transmit and then sleep, cutting back on power consumption. The devices could run for several months before requiring a new battery. Plus both hardware and software are open source which make this alternative considerably attractive in term of pricing comparing to other real time tracking RFID system.
One of the possible real life application is crowd control, like the seasonal pilgrimage of Mecca. The identities wouldn't be important but crowd control monitors could note when many of the tagged pilgrims converge in one spot, implying that potentially many other untagged people are also in the same area, and then they could work to divert or otherwise alleviate the congestion.
