If you have a look at what is currently being used today at point of sales, in manufacturing and logistics, often you will still find a good ol’ bar code scanner. Reason being, barcode scanners come at a reasonable price and offer a number of features and functionalities, which allow easy usage and integration into existing or new systems. Barcode labels are inexpensive and the readers often act as a human interface device (HID), e.g. keyboard. Once configured to read specified barcode types, the scanners input the read data directly as keystrokes into any application at the current cursor position. This allows the use of such HID enabled scanners with existing software without the need of any modifications.
There is a clear market trend of “going RFID”. As you will see, there are several demands for replacing or adding RFID technology to existing infrastructures. When examining RFID readers we must look at two categories: physical access readers (PAC) and logical access readers. PAC readers do have a stand alone functionality, thus allowing them to handle specific access cards and data, whereas logical access readers are typically so called transparent readers.
Transparent readers are not acting autonomously (e.g. polling for and handling of contactless cards). They “just” pass on data sent by the host application and received by the contactless card in the correct electrical and protocol related way according to the underlying standards. As there is a variety of different chips and cards (forming an RFID system), the secret of a good RFID reader lies in its firmware and how it handles a wide variety of existing “systems” to ensure the highest possible level of interoperability. This is particularly true for ISO14443 and ISO15693 but also applies for LF or UHF readers.
So, if we are looking at the aforementioned use cases such as POS, manufacturing or logistics are usually dealing with transparent readers controlled by a host application. This is the most flexible way of how one can utilize the features of a transparent reader but is in contradiction to the HID feature and convenience offered by a barcode scanner.
Reverting back to the question at hand: “Can you drop in replace a barcode scanner with an RFID reader?” The answer is yes, and no…Sounds wired but here comes the explanation: You cannot easily use an existing transparent RFID reader as you have to modify or create the host application software to support the reader and card related commands – so it’s a simple “no” for the drop in replacement.
What does it require then to make an RFID reader a drop in replacement for a barcode reader? Well, this involves specific firmware offering the same convenience and functionality as a barcode scanner–in the case of a contactless card instead of a barcode label, the RFID reader firmware must read specified data from a selected RFID chip converting it into the correct format and outputting this as key strokes to the connected host autonomously. And, of course, the reader needs to register itself as a keyboard at the host.
As there are many different chips available and different demands regarding the data to read, such as card serial number (CSN) only or data located in a specified sector or file accessible only after authentication, you must have a specific firmware to handle those demands.
Identive has been observing the market needs and customer requests for such easy-to-handle products and has developed RFID readers with the above mentioned functionality.
0 comments:
Post a Comment