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    RFID question

    Well, it's been some time since I spent a bunch of money on this system, it's time I looked into RFID.

    OK, anyone using it?
    What would the range on the receiver be? I have a whole house full of "300 foot" devices that are good to about 50. Every place in the house should be within 30 feet or so of the receiver. The back of the property is about 60 feet. I can get away with buying one receiver and a couple of credit card transmitters, but I can't buy more than one.

    Thoughts anyone?

    John

    #2
    John,
    This is a close call. One reader is pushing it and you may have to do some serious tinkering to get it to work just right. Two would be better and 3 the icing on the cake. It's a shame these units had to jump up in price so much. It was going to be a perfect DIY system but became cost prohibitive for most after the initial release.
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      #3
      Hi John,

      There are some guys running this with a single reader so hopefully they will chime in?

      I've had great success with 3 readers installed and easily have coverage over the entire house and yard and cars are picked up a couple houses away by the garage reader that is set on high gain.

      One of the issues with a single reader is that when you increase the gain to get wide coverage, a dead spot can develope near the reader (coverage starts to resemble a doughnut).

      I have a small 1-story home and think that 3 readers is actually overkill for my install and expect that I can do everything I do now with only 2?

      Cheers,
      Paul

      Click to visit: www.sbsmarthomes.com
      Santa Barbara Smarthomes

      Authorized Russound Dealer & Installer

      Personal HA Website

      HomeSeer User Profile

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        #4
        Paul,
        Would you be interested in selling one of your readers?
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          #5
          ?Maybe?

          I'm monkeying around with my entire HA configuration quite a bit right now... maybe I'll pull one out and test for a few weeks to see if I miss it.

          Paul

          Click to visit: www.sbsmarthomes.com
          Santa Barbara Smarthomes

          Authorized Russound Dealer & Installer

          Personal HA Website

          HomeSeer User Profile

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            #6
            Let me know.

            Greg
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              #7
              Originally posted by pkoslow
              Hi John,

              I've had great success with 3 readers installed and easily have coverage over the entire house and yard and cars are picked up a couple houses away by the garage reader that is set on high gain.
              Just curious. Have you tried triangulation with the 3 receivers to pin point the location of the tag? If so How well did it work?

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                #8
                I never liked the fact you had to set some harsh delays on when the tags are "gone" so you don't get false triggers.
                If I'm going to spend lots and lots of money on an RFID system I don't like the fact I have to wait 60 seconds before I can declare a tag "gone" before I do things.
                Eg. If all the cars leave the property, lock the doors. 60 seconds is a LONG time to wait.

                Is it still like this?

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by FrankR
                  Just curious. Have you tried triangulation with the 3 receivers to pin point the location of the tag? If so How well did it work?
                  No, have not tried to calculate positon using triangulation. Most of my use is simply to track what/who is home (or not) and then some stuff based on signal strength to a single reader for trash cans, etc.

                  I remember there was a lot of discussion about "triangulation" when the RFID product was first released, but I don't see it as really being feasible and I don't think this use has ever been really been backed by iAutomate.

                  We never really have the tags on person while home, so woudn't benefit from this even it did work.

                  Cheers,
                  Paul

                  Click to visit: www.sbsmarthomes.com
                  Santa Barbara Smarthomes

                  Authorized Russound Dealer & Installer

                  Personal HA Website

                  HomeSeer User Profile

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by rirvine
                    I never liked the fact you had to set some harsh delays on when the tags are "gone" so you don't get false triggers.
                    If I'm going to spend lots and lots of money on an RFID system I don't like the fact I have to wait 60 seconds before I can declare a tag "gone" before I do things.
                    Eg. If all the cars leave the property, lock the doors. 60 seconds is a LONG time to wait.

                    Is it still like this?
                    I've kept my tag timeouts set high (at 60 secs) since my initial configuration over a year ago when initially there were some problems. I've only had one false "away" in the last year and it happened while I was monkeying around in HS with a new plug-in.

                    I think that with HS2 you can now successfully reduce the tag timeout values, but I'll have to defer to someone else to verify this.

                    I can't claim to understand criminal behaviour, but if this is what you're concerned about with the 60 second wait, I don't know that you should be? If someone is watching you house and is aggressive enough to enter within 1 minute of you leaving, then they will quickly be detected once the security systems arms and they are picked up by the motion sensors.

                    Hopefully some others using shorter timeouts can comment on their success?

                    Cheers,
                    Paul

                    Click to visit: www.sbsmarthomes.com
                    Santa Barbara Smarthomes

                    Authorized Russound Dealer & Installer

                    Personal HA Website

                    HomeSeer User Profile

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                      #11
                      I started of with 1 reader but could not get it working reliably. So I bought another. I now have most of the house covered with a couple of the rooms on the top floor missing out which is not a big deal. Even though I nearly have complete coverage I very occasionally (say thrice this year) get a tag drop out usually because the other half takes her purse (where the tag is) into the far garden or upstairs to the top rooms and occasionally in a dead spot, where I have one of the readers set to high gain to catch the approach.
                      So I would actually like a third reader just to make the whole thing rock solid.

                      I would say that for most applications that 2 is a minimum 3 is ideal.

                      Like Paul I still have mine set to 60 timeout. I have not found it a big deal. I make the house wait 10 minutes before it shuts down anyway in case of a quick return or we have forgot something etc.

                      Just read this through and it reads quite negative just wanted to add that RFID is well worth every penny and I love it.

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