Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

kabayiri

A friend used to sell RFID tracking devices for industrial use; mainly these automated mobile platforms you see floating around factories.

During the trial periods there was sometimes a problem with people relocating the device to show the product in a poor light.

Could this suffer the same fate?

Generali

PasturesNew wrote: »

Could get yourself a deckchair and sit on the beach all summer hiring them out and selling them to visitors who don't want to lose a child.

Are they waterproof?

They don't look very waterproof although I'm sure some silicone could make them so.

I wish fc123 was around, I'd love her advice.

vivatifosi

We use RFID tracking on library books. The price of tagging, as I understand it, is reducing as RFID becomes more commonplace. So the risk as a business model is going to be someone copying your software and making a cheaper solution, then being caught with a lot of overpriced stock. FWIW I think it is a great idea, but the tags are too expensive. I'd love to be able to trace lost things though.

Please ignore what I've said if RFID is not the basis of the technology.

PasturesNew

vivatifosi wrote: »

RFID tracking on library books

Would that mean one could receive a random knock at the door - and when you open it there's some scarey bint standing there, with arms crossed, saying "You've got our book. Hand it over".

kabayiri

vivatifosi wrote: »

We use RFID tracking on library books. The price of tagging, as I understand it, is reducing as RFID becomes more commonplace. So the risk as a business model is going to be someone copying your software and making a cheaper solution, then being caught with a lot of overpriced stock. FWIW I think it is a great idea, but the tags are too expensive. I'd love to be able to trace lost things though.

Please ignore what I've said if RFID is not the basis of the technology.

It's a classic "version 1" of the product targetted at early adopters. It proves the market demand.

Follow up versions may not have a defined physical form. It might prove more profitable to license the protocol and technology to the companies producing wearable technology for example.

Nobody yet has resolved the key questions for me around Authorisation; Access; and Authentication.

I suspect we will have another "Tonight" special in a few years time !

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

Would that mean one could receive a random knock at the door - and when you open it there's some scarey bint standing there, with arms crossed, saying "You've got our book. Hand it over".

Ha ha, not with our version. The data in our RFID tags relates to the item. It has no personal data in it unless you are a library book.

Many library authorities used to have debt collectors. I think ours did too, though they had been phased out many years before I started there. It costs too much to collect the debt, so the best thing to do is have a low account limit so people can't run up huge debts. Have a low but manageable limit that people have to pay off to reactivate their account.

ETA: our library RFID tags do not have a very strong signal. You want them to read the books in the self service machines, not the ones on the adjacent shelves, which are often just a few inches away.

vivatifosi

kabayiri wrote: »

It's a classic "version 1" of the product targetted at early adopters. It proves the market demand.

Follow up versions may not have a defined physical form. It might prove more profitable to license the protocol and technology to the companies producing wearable technology for example.

Nobody yet has resolved the key questions for me around Authorisation; Access; and Authentication.

I suspect we will have another "Tonight" special in a few years time !

If I was an early adopter (I'm not typically so should probably stop here), I'd want to tag multiple items: car keys, laptop, tablet, phone... so rather than paying £15 for one I'd rather pay £30 for a kit containing say six. I don't think early adopters, by their nature, will have just one thing that they want to track.

GDB2222

Can I take on the role of wet blanket?

These trackers use low-power Bluetooth technology, so I assume that your phone has to be within a few metres of the item you are looking for. So, it would be great if you drop your keys in the bin, but not very helpful if you drop them outside somewhere.

To compensate for that, they are trying to set up a network of many phones running their software, so the device only needs to be near one of these other phones to be tracked. In practice, that only works if you have a large number, a very very large number, of other phones running the software the whole time.

The claimed battery life is under a year, so it will not help you much if you sew one into a coat, as you will have to keep on changing the battery. One reviewer on the ios app says the actual battery life is one month.

STAY AWAY FROM TRACKR - THEY ARE SCAMMING PEOPLE OUT OF MONEY !!!

by Pdr987
I bought 5 of these ornaments - I call them ornaments as they have only worked twice. Once when I first got the and paired it to my phone and the second time when I had to delete it all and start again as the batteries had gone flat within a month. The problem is you don't know the battery goes flat unless you test it on a regular basis. I was sitting next to my keys and the trackr still wouldn't go off and I tried to press the trackR to find my phone - again they were next to each other and it kept staying in finding mode and had it registered somewhere I had been 5 days before. I have tried to contact the company on Facebook, unfortunately they are removing most of the negative comments do I tried to contact customer services and have had no response. There are a lot of unhappy people but you wouldn't know as they have also been barred from their page. Look at the number of comments and see how many you can actually see - the ones you can't are the ones they have removed. If there wasn't an issue why remove most of the negative comments and are still selling these things knowing there's an issue - what a scam & a con !!!

LydiaJ

vivatifosi wrote: »

If I was an early adopter (I'm not typically so should probably stop here), I'd want to tag multiple items: car keys, laptop, tablet, phone... so rather than paying £15 for one I'd rather pay £30 for a kit containing say six. I don't think early adopters, by their nature, will have just one thing that they want to track.

I agree. I want several. I could easily be an early adopter of these.

I currently have my mobile phone attached to my keys, so that when I lose them, I can use my landline to call my phone and find my keys. It's worked well for me for years, and I can't imagine having keys that weren't attached to a finding device now. It's bulky, though, having the phone and keys attached. These little tags would be more convenient, and I'd like to tag my wallet too, and DD's keys, and probably some other things.

ETA That's IF they work. Thanks for the note of caution GDB.

kabayiri

vivatifosi wrote: »

...
ETA: our library RFID tags do not have a very strong signal. You want them to read the books in the self service machines, not the ones on the adjacent shelves, which are often just a few inches away.

They are probably passive RFID devices which draw power from the scanning device via electromagnetic waves.