Cap’n Crunch or AIDC – Which Do You Notice More?

It’s hard to believe RFID technology has been around since WWII. Though somewhat different, RFID and barcoding technology is not new, but both are core elements of Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC). If you haven’t noticed barcodes on practically everything, than the evolution of technology and barcode management has definitely done its job correctly. Before barcodes and host systems that store the information, the organization of products was a manual process that required a great amount of time, money and resources.

There are major benefits to using AIDC:

• Automatically recording these activities
• Reducing labor costs
• More complete and accurate information than manual record keeping

As I sat down with a delicious bowl of Cap’n Crunch® Berries this morning, I paid more attention to the barcode on the back of the cereal box. Fascinating, these barcodes are everywhere. It is such an organized and advanced system that I wanted to dive into it more. I began to wonder how often do local government and municipalities use this technology; is it just for food and beverage distribution?

Government has definitely incorporated these technologies, and many of us don’t even realize it. That’s how good it has become – so good that it has become unnoticeable. We don’t acknowledge or even notice the use of these technologies in traffic and parking tickets (until it’s too late), the DMV system, voting booths, census statistics, and so on. Think about the inventory the Department of Defense has? Think they are taking advantage of RFID and barcodes? You bet they are.

Why should we really care? Well, keep in mind that our tax dollars help fund these systems, so it’s important to keep them running as efficiently and productive as possible. If almost everything state and federal agencies did was manually input into a system, costs would probably be a little higher.

I hope the next time you sit down for your morning bowl of cereal, you’ll think about RFID and barcoding a little differently, and the other industries using these technologies.

-RS

Zebra Barcodes – Literally?

A short post today, but nonetheless interesting. I stumbled upon an article that blends nature and the AIDC industry perfectly into one another…I hope the folks at Zebra are on this!

Broadband Devices Driving Mobile Market Gains

I actually just saw this headline this morning in another popular blog spot and the timing seemed appropriate. We are seeing a huge upswing in the need for organizations to track, monitor and manage personal and business-class devices. Unlike traditional AIDC devices, most business class devices are designed for Broadband first and Wi-Fi second, putting a lot more data on the cellular carrier networks.

I find it interesting that the article talks in terms of market saturation, but what I am also hearing here is the potential for network saturation. One of the things that Wavelink Engineering has spent significant time on is making sure that a multi-modal Mobile Device will choose the best medium for updates, and restricting large updates to only those connections that meet a configurable minimum adapter link speed.

The article also talks about the efficiency and cost-effective nature of text messaging. We thought about that too. We can reach out to a multi-modal device first using SMS messaging to ask it to perform an update without knowing whether Wi-Fi or Broadband is available. When the device receives the message requesting an update, it can automatically choose the best network to perform that update.

Anyway, I’m watching the growth of iPhone, Android and Blackberry closely, and I’ll be curious to see how it plays itself out in the AIDC market.

Ferrari’s, Marlboro, Subliminal Advertising and… Barcodes!?

Ducati motorcycle with barcode-like image; courtesy of http://www.gomonews.com

Not a list of items you would normally come across, I know. But apparently, according to this article, there has been a bit of an uproar on the potential use of barcode images that look like a pack of Marlboro cigarettes on Ferrari F1 cars.

Of course, whether it does actually look like a pack of Marlboro’s is being contested between European anti-tobacco groups and the Ferrari/Marlboro side. On our side of things, what’s most interesting is that if you check out the GoMo link, they mention that the barcode is so realistic, that barcode software actually tries to interpret it! Art imitates life?

Wi-Fi – Ruggedized versus Consumer Grade – Part II

Yesterday we talked about some of the basic differences between a consumer grade Wi-Fi device and one made for the AIDC industry (the ruggedized version).  Now let’s dig into some more detail.

Vendors of AIDC equipment know that having an industrial grade supplicant is key.  So the supplicants they pre-load are built to deal with harsh Wi-Fi environments and the extremes of competing with large numbers of other third party networks.

Supplicants supplied by all the major AIDC vendors handle the example cited in yesterday’s blog posting about our Seattle office with ease.  And these supplicants go further…

Wi-Fi – Ruggedized versus consumer grade. What are the differences?

As many of you have come to find out through the use of smartphones and PDAs with Wi-Fi, that getting connectivity can often be a headache.  Although 3G has reduced these woes through better coverage, the truth is that some devices just don’t want to connect to Wi-Fi when you haven’t got the luxury of 3G.

The symptoms are typically that your device connects and then drops the connection and then hunts for another.  And sometimes the connection looks promising – you have three or four bars and yet the device comes back and says “unable to connect”.  You shrug your shoulders, you move on and it was no big deal.

However, if this was your network and the device has to work, you’d be frustrated.  Now, in AIDC, this is precisely the case as it’s a critical business productivity tool on which you depend.  To help with this, these devices typically have a more industrial grade radio in them – it might be more sensitive or have greater power.  However, the design improvements don’t stop there. 

HP Veteran Exec Jumps Ship For AIDC Vendor Intermec

Interesting times…

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