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    Newbie questions about tags and readers for positioning

    Hello all! I'm making the plunge into home automation and have decided that presence/location detection is my first step, through a combination of RFID and motion detectors. I've been researching here on this forum, and particularly the iAutomate and CheaperRFID solutions. I'd like to start cheap and ramp up, so CheaperRFID is sounding good But I'm a little confused about a few things...

    Are RFID solutions interchangeable? ie. could I use the CheaperRFID tags and reader, and add on some iAutomate tags? I'd like smaller tracking tags that are more of a few-feet range rather than many metres, and iAutomate has a great selection of tags, although they don't seem to note the range of them.

    What's the best setup for using multiple RFID readers within a home to approximate a person's location? Can the distance/direction be effectively tuned for accuracy? These all have to be connected via serial port to a PC (or run long distances over cat5 I suppose), correct? I'm assuming there's some kind of HomeSeer client that lets you connect devices to multiple PCs?

    #2
    My objective for CheaperRFID was proximity/location determination. I concluded the technology does not support this. Do not expect to get more that presence detection with it. I cannot speak to iAutomate's solution.

    Motion detectors work good for location indication, but they do not indicate what/who moved in the detectors field of view.

    If you want a multiple PC solution then xAP is your best supported alternative. xapmcsRFID can run on multiple computers and consolidated information collected at the Homeseer, or any other, PC.

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      #3
      Welcome to the HomeSeer bulletin board.
      Originally posted by stephthegeek View Post
      Are RFID solutions interchangeable? ie. could I use the CheaperRFID tags and reader, and add on some iAutomate tags?
      No the 2 systems are totally differnet systems and are not interchangable.
      I'd like smaller tracking tags that are more of a few-feet range rather than many metres, and iAutomate has a great selection of tags, although they don't seem to note the range of them.

      What's the best setup for using multiple RFID readers within a home to approximate a person's location? Can the distance/direction be effectively tuned for accuracy? Using the iAutomate system you can determin weather a tag is coming or going but no with the cheaper system
      These all have to be connected via serial port to a PC (or run long distances over cat5 I suppose), correct?
      Serial for both
      I'm assuming there's some kind of HomeSeer client that lets you connect devices to multiple PCs?
      If you want to use multiple pc's you need to look into xAP
      💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

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        #4
        Hmm okay, that's a bit of a bummer. I don't really want to invest in hardware that isn't going to be able to grow to accomplish what I want to do with it. May have to re-think my starting point.

        Thanks for pointing out xAP... I hadn't come across it yet and it's looking like a very useful package.

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          #5
          So has this gotten to the point of being able to "locate" a tag yet? Something that could be displayed on a web page maybe that show all RFID tags and their locations. We seem to misplace things alot in my house. Remotes, kids, etc.

          Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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            #6
            So has this gotten to the point of being able to "locate" a tag yet?
            No

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              #7
              It seems that the iAutomate RFID will allow for tag locaiton(s). I will have to look more into that.

              Thanks.

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                #8
                so, currently, there are only 8m and 40m transmitters. what if we requested a chip with an even more limited range, say 3-5 meters, then with multiple receivers around the house and some triangulation logic, couldn't you determine rough location inside the house?

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                  #9
                  Actually if you cut the on the 8m transmitter down to about 2mm it is around 3-5m transmit range. I could probably work on an attenuated antenna design for the receivers as well. Doing all of this, it would be technically possible to determine a position in the house to the room level...but thats about as good as it would get without Relative Signal Strength (RSS).

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