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Hey guys! My name is Timothy Pribyl and I am a Sales Account Manager at atlasRFIDstore.com. Today I am going to explain a little bit about what RFID is, and walk through the process of writing an RFID tag.
Radio Frequency Identification is a technology that allows almost any object to be wirelessly identified using data transmitted through radio waves. This technology allows you to identify and track individual items, as well as multiple items simultaneously, without a direct line of sight.
Here are a few quick facts about RFID.
Most RFID systems are made up of the same basic components -- an RFID Reader, Antenna, RFID Tags, Antenna Cable, and sometimes additional items or accessories. If it is a mobile handheld like we will be using today, only a handheld reader and an RFID tag will be needed. There are a few different types of mobile handheld readers, the one we are going to use today is an RFID Sled reader, which means that it requires a compatible smart device and app.
Now that I have introduced you to a little about RFID, let&#;s talk about reading and writing RFID tags.
If you are not familiar with an EPC number, take a look at our article, 17 Things You Might Not Know About Gen 2 RFID Tag Memory Banks.
Today, I will be using the Turck Grokker UHF RFID Reader and a SMARTRAC Dogbone RFID Tag. I have set up my reader by downloading the app from the app store, and logging in. Now let&#;s see if we can read our tag.
As you can see it has found our RFID tag and its EPC number is . Now let&#;s change that EPC number from to .
Here&#;s how you do it.
Next, we will read our tag with the new EPC.
Software can be bought or created that has additional functionalities to help an application. One example is with this reader and its app available for download on the App Store, we can assign a name and picture to a tag making it easy for us to find the tag we are looking for on-screen. Here&#;s is how you can do it.
When you are doing this, make sure there are no other tags in the area.
Once it has been read, the tag&#;s associated information is stored in a database on the app. Now, if we step away from the tag, and want to locate it again, select &#;Locate tag&#; and select the tag that we just programmed.
Using this app, image, and name association with an individual tag allows you to locate the exact tag you are looking for, without searching through multiple EPCs.
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Thanks for tuning into this video about RFID and Reading and Writing tags. For information on all things RFID, check out our blog or our RFID resources page. And as always, if you have any questions at all, send us an or give us a call.
If you want to learn more about RFID tags, check out the links below!
The Pepperl+Fuchs high-frequency (HF, 13.56 MHz) RFID system is open and easy to use. &#;Open&#; means that it complies with the international standards ISO/IEC and ISO/IEC -3. Pepperl+Fuchs&#; RFID read/write heads can read any RFID tags made to this standard and, at the same time, any RFID system can read Pepperl+Fuchs&#; RFID tags. In this blog article, we explain how to decode HF RFID tags to configure your HF RFID system.
The openness of the RFID system has allowed several manufacturers to produce chips, i.e. electronics that are included in the RFID tag, making the overall tag price very competitive. Even though all of these chips conform to the same ISO/IEC standard, slight differences in functionality and features mean it is important for RFID controllers to know which chip to read before starting to read. This one configuration parameter, easily programmed into controllers, is called the RFID tag type.
The RFID tag type is a two-digit identifier from 00 to 99 that represents a specific RFID chip type. For example, the tag type for the Pepperl+Fuchs IQC21 RFID tag is 21. The tag type always follows the IQC prefix in the model number. So you do not need to know which chip was used for the IQC21 tag. You simply enter the 21 into the RFID read head parameter field.
An alternative to entering the tag type as a parameter in the controller is to use the default tag type of 20. Tag type 20 does not stand for a certain chip, but refers to all ISO/IEC standard RFID tags. The read head will attempt to decode the tag type before initiating the desired read or write operation.
Example: If you want to write 8 bytes to a tag and you don&#;t know exactly what type of chip it is, leave the tag type as the default value and perform the write operation. So the read-only code or UID (Unique Identifier) on the RFID tag is read first, which is an 8-byte unique identifier. From this number, the manufacturer and chip type can be decoded. Once the chip is known, the writing of 8 bytes is performed automatically. The first reading of the code increases the total time of the writing process by about 20 ms, because the UID had to be read first, but everything was done in the background without the user&#;s knowledge.
The UID is the unique, read-only identifier located on the RFID tag. This number is unique regardless of where you purchase the chip. This is possible because the number is composed of a unique manufacturer number and a unique chip number. In addition, each manufacturer is required to program only RFID tags with unique numbers. No number can be used twice. The result is that there are no duplicate numbers on ISO/IEC RFID tags.
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The chart gives an overview on how the UID of an RFID tag is coded.
All high-frequency RFID tags conform to the same ISO/IEC standard. However, there are mandatory and optional features in this standard, and we believe it is important for an RFID system to work as quickly as possible.
For example, Texas Instruments (TI) makes a chip they call HF-I Plus and another they call HF-I Standard. The Standard chip requires the reader to access one block of data at a time. The Plus chip has a Read Multiple Blocks feature so that the reader can read all of the tag&#;s data in one large block. You can always only read one block at a time from either tag. But if you need a lot of data, this method would not be very efficient.
Another reason to know the tag type is the block size. Certain RFID tags, like the 2K Fujitsu chip, only allow 8-byte blocks to be read. If the tag type is set to 33, which corresponds to the Fujitsu tag type, all commands with block sizes that are not a multiple of 8 bytes will be rejected before any communication with the read head is attempted. This makes it easier to determine the problem when the failed response is returned.
All ISO/IEC standard systems from Pepperl+Fuchs are open. This means that no encryption is activated by default. This also allows users to use RFID tags from other manufacturers and read them with one of the Pepperl+Fuchs RFID read/write heads. Use the HF tag type table below to configure your RFID system for any RFID tag purchased from Pepperl+Fuchs or on the open market.
table_tags_chip_types_en
The table shows many of the HF RFID tag types (13.56 MHz) supported by Pepperl+Fuchs and the associated chip types.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website Tray RFID Readers.