room to room tracker

[collegeboyslive]

ok guys, time to get excited again. I want to build a system, now this can be like rfid tags or bigger BUT i need soemthing i can put on people, be it a unit like a pager or something, then as they move from room to room the system can tell homeseer who is in what room. and that they have just moved rooms, it has to be acurate not aproxamate?

has anyone seen or played with anything like this?

[jrfuda]

Just some thoughts...

RFID with receivers in each room, and each receiver's gain tuned so they only see tags in their room. Would require mounting each receiver in the middle of each room (antenna in the ceiling, pointing down, which would not be too intrusive). This would give you romm-by-room resolution, but not where in a room resolution. For really big rooms, you could use multiple receivers, and know what region of each room each person is in... You could also get fancier by increasing the gain of each receiver to cover more than one room and use multiple receivers to triangulate location, but that would require some serious scripting, and the script would have to fire very often to kep track of everyone... so that may be too much!

As far as what each person carries, I thik they make RFID tags the size of a credit card, and also make a watch-like tag.

[collegeboyslive]

what happens if the rfid tag is picked up by 2 receivers? does it pick the stongest signal?

[jrfuda]

cbl, whatever solution you choose will need a little scripting/logic to figure it out. I think the RFID hardware gives signal strengths... I've read a bit on it but have never used it, so I can't tell you for sure.

Here is a related post.. might be a good idea to repost in the iAutomate RFID plugin forum and/or see if you can get a mod to move this thread there...

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=109759

Considering the large scale of the system you're considering, you may want to iAutomate.com directly and see if they can help you with a custom solution.

[jrfuda]

And here's another good post: http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?...c=2075&hl=rfid

[collegeboyslive]

cool. so in my house i would need say 1 receiver in each room , thats....18 rooms. how to all the receivers talk back to homeseer? dont tell me each one has to have a seperate serial connection? or can they all tie into a sinles data line?

[Tcassio]

Have you priced the recievers? Better hope to win Lotto.

[huggy591]

I have no idea what these cost, but here's a Wi-fi approach to the same thing:

http://www.ekahau.com

Hospitals and warehouses have looked at various systems like this to track inventory and now personnel.

The guys that came up with VNC (at AT&T) also were working on an IR badge system for locating people and things. Since IR is stopped by walls and is usually cheaper than RF solutions, it might be a better solution for homes.

BTW, solutions are now being called RTLS - real-time locator systems - and here's some data on the market, etc.:

http://www.idtechex.com/products/en/...tcategoryid=98

[collegeboyslive]

Have you priced the recievers? Better hope to win Lotto.[/QUOTE]yeah i just looked EEK !!!! i had figured around $100 for a receiver. well they may come down