Group 256

From ECE Department Wiki

Contents 1 Project Description 2 Project Goal 3 Members 4 Advisor 5 General Overview 6 Documents 7 Active Transmitter/Receiver 7.1 Active Transmitter 7.2 Active Receiver 8 RFID Transmitter/Receiever 9 User Interface

Project Description

Bobcat was in need of a system to monitor and control their inventory of test equipment. At their factory in Gwinner, ND they have an outdoor equipment yard where test equipment is stored for engineering uses and employee personally use. Some sort of wireless inventory system was the perfered method of tracking the equipment.

Project Goal

The main point of this project is to be able to monitor traffic going into as well as exiting the yard. Two different approaches were used to satisfy the project requirements. The first approach was to build our own transmitter/receiver circuits while the second was to use already developed circuitry but modify it to suit our purposes. To satisfy the first approach, a LINX transmitter/receiver pair was used with our designed circuitry to produce a low startup cost method of tracking a small number of items. The more expensive initial cost approach involved integrating an ALIEN RFID Reader into our system and making it user friendly.

Members

• Brandon Voller
• Jake DeCock
• Brandon Grimes
• Colin Engel
• Bret Shiers

Advisor

• Dr. Glower

General Overview

The main idea behind the tracking system is to first give each piece of equipment an ID number, and then monitor the movement of all the ID numbers at the entry and exit points to determine what equipment has left and what remains.

In order to determine if an item is entering of leaving the facility one receiver must be placed slightly inside each exit point and another must be placed slightly outside each exit. If the signal from an ID tag is picked up by the inside receiver followed by the outside receiver, then the item is leaving the facility. Similarly, if the the outside receiver sees the ID signal first, followed by the inside receiver seeing the signal, then the ID is entering the facility. Using this ability to monitor which IDs enter and exit the area we are able to determine which IDs, and thus which items, are present and which are absent.

Documents

• Requirements Capture

• Final Report

• Users Manual

Active Transmitter/Receiver

Active Transmitter

Active Transmitter Details

• Relatively small (2 inches x 3 inches x 1 inch)
• Requires Batteries (Battery life is approx. 6 months)
• Tag ID can be set using onboard jumpers (No reprogramming to change #)
• Up to 255 different tag IDs
• Can withstand temperatures from -40C to 75C
• Approximately $10 per Active Transmitter

Active Receiver

Active Receiver Details

• Filters out erroneous data
• Approximately $15 per Active Receiver
• Need two receivers per gate
• Powered off of a wall outlet (via a 110V to 5V converter)

RFID Transmitter/Receiever

Alien Reader

• Acquired from Alien Technology
• Reader costs approx. $2000 each
• Has 4 antennas
• Need two antennas to monitor each gate
• ID tags cost approx. $0.25 each
• 10000 possible ID tag numbers
• Tags do not require batteries
• Tags are tiny
• Tags do not work well near metal or water
• Range is approx. 20ft

Alien Control Unit (ACU)

• Communicates with Alien Reader
• Instructs Alien Reader to look for tags
• Filters out tag number received from the Alien Reader
• Sends tag IDs to the PC Interface

User Interface

The User Interface processes and displays the data that is received from the active receiver or ACU (whichever system is being implemented). Based on the order in which each receiver or antenna registered each tag, the user interface will check the item in or out as appropriate. The User Interface also allows the user to easily locate the status of any item they are interested in by making use of the sort and filter buttons.