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Visualizing RFID

Posted by kdawson on from the tufte-would-be-proud dept.

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."

6 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. New Technique by cjfs · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  2. Simple method for visualizing RFID by syousef · · Score: 3, Funny

    1. Pick up RFID chip
    2. Look at it. It's an RFID chip! You have just visualized it.
    3. ???
    4. Profit

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    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  3. Re:Matlab by NixieBunny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The main reason they did this is to map out the field *interaction* between the RFID tag and the reader, which is not a trivial thing to visualize based on the two data sheets.

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    The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
  4. Re:The field patterns of loop antennas by buchner.johannes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
  5. Re:... for a given antenna and receiver sensitivit by Ecyrd · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, but e.g. ISO 14443 RFID passive responses (e.g. the ones used in ICAO-specified RFID passports and paypass cards) very quickly go below ambient background noise, in effect limiting even the theoretical range to 1-2 m for all but most exotic radio-noise free environments.

    Passive RFID is only half-radio, really. ;-)

  6. Re:Interesting, but not amazing by digitig · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The subtlety seems to be that they're not plotting an RF field, they're plotting the volume in which the passive tag will respond to an RF field (of a given strength). It's another level of abstraction. Yes, once somebody has come up with the idea then the implementation looks simple enough, but the idea is quite remarkable.

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