Anyone have any experience with RFID readers?
- This topic has 6 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Dec 18, 2010 at 2:26 am by
.
-
Posts
-
I have experience with it in a industrial environment Zach. We used to use it alot in our plant but finally gave it up because of serious reliability issues. In an all metal plant with microwaves at every snack location we were constantly tracking down issues with RF and interference. It was a daily grind… We even once went as far as building wooden “dog houses” around some of the problem readers and lining them with some kind of space age stealth foam. It didn’t work. Considering that we had millions invested it took an act of congress to finally move away from it to another system that is almost 100% reliable. I can’t talk about that system except to say that it also wouldn’t work for fish. In short my opinion on RFID systems is that they work fine in very controlled environments but outside of that IMO it’s a crap shoot.
Zach,
Roy is correct regarding the challenges of reading RFID tags through water. Low frequency signals are transmitted through water, while most others are absorbed, severly limiting the efficiency of reading. While low frequency RFID’s do have reduced shielding issues, they also typically have a reduced effective tag reading range (i.e. < 2 ft). Some considerable research has been done to develop a passive RFID tag design that would be suitable for use involving liquids. I specifically remember that one of the groups, Omni-ID, had some success and produces commercially available "extreme environment" tags. A number of other companies have developed low frequency RFID tags (e.g. Texas Instruments), which have their own advantages and limitations. I have no idea about costs. http://www.rfidradio.com/?p=26
Steven Rogers
I have some limited user experience with RFID technology and animals including just a few experiences with fish and quite a bit of experience with turtles. I don’t know many details about how the technology works, and I know nothing whatsoever about RFID paint.
The use of implantable tags or chips (PIT-passive integrated transponders) is a very common method of marking fish and other animals for re-capture and identification. These are generally little tubular passive transponders just a few mm long that are inserted under the skin or into the body cavity of an animal via a simple syringe. In all my use of them, the animal has to be above the water and within a few inches of the scanner for the tag to be read. The same type of tags are used to record fish passage, when a receiver antenna is placed across a stream, fish-passage ladder, canal, etc. There are also some scanners that are like a waterproof wand that can be carried around and placed in the water to scan tags that are close. In all of these applications, the tag has to be close, within maybe a meter or less (although there may be some that can read from a bit farther away?).
I understand where you’re coming from. The idea of simply walking the banks with a scanner and antenna, noting the location of all your fish without disturbing them, is very attractive. For larger fish in relatively shallow fresh water, regular radio telemetry can be used to locate fish. Acoustic methods can be used for large fish in deeper water and in salt water. I’m not on the cutting edge of fisheries research technology by any means. But the problem of tracking fish and wildlife in their natural environment is a large and very active field.
Of consideration also, is the potential effect of using even somthing as small as an earing to mark fish. I would guess that before a fisheries biologist would publish on using a novel technique like that, he/she would want to see some controlled lab studies estimating the effect of a hard external tag on the fishes’ behavior.
It sounds like cool idea with potential value. Curious to see what you discover.
G
ps. the several scanners I have used come from this company.
Indiana DNR has done this with walleye on Lake Monroe.
Here is a link with reports and maps of the project.
http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/3280.htm
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.