RFID peripherals

Plug and play RFID-reading USB peripherals are all the rage, as indicated by a stream of recent product announcements. These readers plug into a PC and make various things happen when they are touched with an RFID tag.

RFID readers are small and cheap, encapsulating them in packaging and offering a standard USB interface makes for a versatile product. What we need to see now is some applications and platforms that make these products useful and desirable.

Mir:ror

Designed as a commercially available product, similar to the Nabaztag rabbit, the Mir:ror is intended to allow physical objects to work with online services. “Violet was inspired by a simple fact: the rift between the virtual world – everything happening on the other side of your computer screen – and the physical world we live in is growing, and growing fast.”

Mir:ror

Tikitag

Tikitag is offering a small, cheap USB reader that plugs into any computer with compatible drivers “Tikitag is an Alcatel-Lucent Venture based in Antwerp, Belgium which provides a service to link the real world with the online world.”

Tikitag

Bowl

The Bowl was created as part of the Touch project and designed to be an object that wouldn’t look out of place in the living room. “The Bowl is a simple media player that can be used by people of all ages, particularly young children. A bowl sits on the living room table and range of physical objects can be placed within it. When an object is placed in the bowl related media is played back on the TV.”

Bowl

Bowl

ThingM

ThingM has been developing RFID-driven interfaces in their WineM concept for a while, and they have developed a smaller, USB version finished in wood.

ThingM / WineM

Airtag

Aimed more towards the high-end, for custom installations in retail environments, “the Airtag reader is a contactless reader for point of sale (POS). Easy to install it can be plugged to any cashier system, or standalone for smart poster.”

Airtag

RFID mon amour

For the sake of completeness, this was perhaps the first commercially available plug-and-play RFID prototyping platform. “Rfid mon amour 1.0 is a kit for designers, artists and architects, which allows the realization of interactive exhibitions in a very simple manner, without any specific knowledge of programming or electronics. The kit comes with an USB based RFID player, Mac OS X compatible software, 10 RFID tags and some sample videos.”

RFID mon amour

Trackbacks

  1. RFID and physical social networks · Touch 30 Sep 2008

    [...] platform, with physical, RFID-based objects that plug into a PC via USB (where have we heard that [...]

  2. links for 2008-10-02 « Rob Edwards: Collection of my daily bookmarks: roedward 02 Oct 2008

    [...] RFID peripherals · Touch (tags: usb tangible tag products pc research rfid) [...]

  3. Antonin web » L’internet des objets : Des outils pour hackers ou une véritable opportunité d’affaire ? 02 Oct 2008

    [...] évidemment, dans cet atelier, il était possible d’utiliser et de voir fonctionner plusieurs de ces périphériques de l’internet des objets : comme le Mir:ror que lance bientôt Violet ou le Tikitag, dès à présent [...]

  4. Notional Slurry » links for 2008-10-03 03 Oct 2008

    [...] RFID peripherals · Touch (tags: RFID makers kits engineering DIY) [...]

Comments

  1. Janne 29 September 2008

    I just hope they’re all NFC Forum compatible…

  2. Timo 29 September 2008

    I know that Airtag and Tikitag are, not so sure about Mir:ror.

    All the others use low-frequency tags AFAIK.

  3. Janne 29 September 2008

    Hmhmhm… I would certainly bet on the ones which are NFC-compatible.

    But anyway, it’s great that these are becoming available. They give the web-heads a running start on developing NFC services, so it does not fall on the HW/device guys only.

    I’m very excited :-)

  4. Julian Bleecker 29 September 2008

    Great compilation Timo. It will be intriguing to see how the – whatever – service/app/experiences will become!

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