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Using RFID Tags Around the House?
Attacked-by-gremlins writes "I have a larger family and various items in the house (some tools, some pieces of clothing) 'travel' unexpectedly. We joke about gremlins doing that, but it's tiring never to be sure that I'll find an object where I left it two days ago. For the sheer hacking fun of it, I'm thinking of sticking RFID tags on some and trying to triangulate a position with several tranceivers placed in the house. Has anyone have any suggestions for this amateur 'Google Home'? Thanks."
Our obsession with making everything small leads directly to this problem. Smaller things get lost more easily.
They sell those giant-sized remote controls at Walgreens or your local random-crap-mart. Buy one, you'll never lose it again. It can't fall between the cushions of the couch because it's friggin huge. If the thing you don't want to lose doesn't come in giant-size, permanently attach it to something which is too large to lose but still portable. Gas stations have learned this lesson, that's why the bathroom key is attached to a huge plank.
To make it even easier, paint it something bright and garish.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Why not have a portable reader that you can carry around with you. When you enter the room, you can get a printout of all the stuff in the room. If the printout does not correspond with your organizational directives--that's what kids are for!
My current employer (i.e. disclaimer - I work for 'em) has stuff that does this -- it's definitely not cheap though. Uses active RFID tags and wireless access points to do the triangulation stuff.
I would have to agree. I just had to do a project for a senior class on tracking people on RFID. It's so bad that decided to use another technology. RFID is just too expensive for anything over centimeter ranges. We ended up going with Zigbee devices from Texas Instruments. If you want to read about our setup it's all here. http://peopletrackerinc.com/ Their really cheap and small, accurate up to 1-2 meters with about 100 yard range. It uses something similar to 802.11 for wireless transmission. It's extremely cool if you want to look into. We have the entire setup up and running to track people within a building.
Maybe buy a a bunch of cheaper receivers and put them on every door jamb in the house. At least then you'll have a "last seen in this room" style locator.