Visualizing RFID

jamie found a video on Warren Ellis's blog introducing a new way to visualize RFID fields. The film is by Timo Arnall and Jack Schulze. The subject is introduced in words on the BERG site (a design consultancy); the tech behind it is explored at Touch, a project that experiments with near-field communications. "This image is a photographic mapping of the readable volume of a radio field from an RFID reader. The black component in the image is an RFID reader... The camera has been fixed in its position and the reader photographed. Using a tag connected to an LED we paint in the edges of the readable volume with a long exposure and animate them to show the form."

Comments

Interesting, but not amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst I never thought of doing this with RF fields, it's not exactly amazing. It is, however, very interesting!

video style..

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these guys geeks or in the media field? That's an incredibly well shot video if its just geeks producing it.
And as for some haters calling this lame- I think its very interesting to have a visual idea of how an everyday product works. At least we know swiping our RFID cards flat will make for easier reading.

Re:Matlab

[GumphMaster]

For a theoretical/measured depiction they could just read the reader manufacturer's data sheet, which will almost certainly contain a diagram of the antenna sensitivity pattern in a couple of planes and probably some concrete figures.

The field patterns of loop antennas

[Technician]

The free field pattern near a loop antenna is nothing new. RFID or any other application such as a transmitter for the heairng impaired makes no difference.

A 3D plot of a simple loop antenna can be seen on this page;
http://vk1od.net/antenna/SmallUntunedSquareLoop/
The 3D plot is near the bottom of the page.
It it resembles the magnetic field of a bar magnet or a coil of wire with a current, that is no supprise.

Re:The field patterns of loop antennas

[buchner.johannes]

Does it bother other people too that we lack good methods of visualizing 3D/4D data? like a sensor value dependent on spacetime v(x, t)?

Can anyone hint me to good methods? I know there are some very experimental 3D-displays.

Re:The field patterns of loop antennas

[buchner.johannes]

Electromagnetism is not new, no. Your link shows a field produced by a antenna, which is only a theoretical concept (abstracting away the measuring sensor).
What the pictures in TFA show is the dependency of the field vs. the direction of the measuring device, i.e. a slice of a vector field B(x).

But I do believe that the makers were not interested in the technical aspect, but a design/architectural/artistic aspect.

Re:New Technique

[noundi]

Using their technique, we can now profile our cards to provide maximum protection with minimum tinfoil!

I have one of those metal card holders which, at first, I was disappointed at since it isolated my RFID keycard at work, because it would be very convenient to just flash the whole card holder. Then I came to my senses and realised that it was a good thing that I always chose when the card was readable and when it was't. It was one of those moments when you just appreciate what you have.