Using battery-free UHF RFID LED tags for pick to light applications saves wire installation and maintenance costs while maintaining pick to light solution advantages.
In previous posts we talked about the feasibility of using UHF RFID LED tags for pick to light applications.
RFID helps automate your inventories making it easier, faster and error free to update your inventories with reliable data. Adding an LED to each tag helps users visually locate the desired item so the picking process is faster and more efficient.
The video below shows how a very small inventory of 8 cases, all the same size and color, have different items in them. For a staff member it is very difficult to visually differentiate the multiple types of connectors those cases hold.
All cases are tagged with a Stella battery-free RFID LED tag. Armed with a Merlin Cross Dipole handheld from Nordic ID, the user can select the item he wants to pick and the RFID tag fixed to the case holding those items will flash its LED. The user now has a visual indicator for a good pick, fast and without errors.
You probably would not need this for an inventory hold in just eight small cases but what about extending this into a several hundred square meter warehouse?
Be it in retail – picking a right size of shoe model and size – or at an industrial level – selecting the right products to ship or enter into a process – UHF RFID LED tags can greatly help reduce picking process time and automate the supply chain.
Good afternoon Mikel,
I studied on your battery free RFID LED sensor tag and kit. I am looking for retrieving paper documents stored in a area with physical shelves. Doing a search for a document in a DMS windows system should trigger the location of the document. To find the document in the room with the shelves should be easy by the blinking light and/or beep. Can this be done with a solution of Farsens, because the user using the DMS is not sitting nearby the shelves. Communication between Tag and Windows system through WLAN?
Thanks for responding in advance
Hi D.J.,
The battery free approach needs to be with RFID. Battery free RFID LEDs cannot communicate via WLAN (meaning WiFi).
RFID systems are composed of RFID readers and RFID tags. The system you are interested in would have an intermediate component which is the RFID reader. The tags would communicate with the reader and then the reader communicates with the Windows system (via WLAN, via Ethernet or by any other means).
I understand you may have lots of questions so please get back to me at mikel.choperena@farsens.com. I’ll be glad to help.
Cheers!
Mikel
I would like to use the LED RFID tags to lead a person from one location to another location. is it possible to have on tag light then another light in a sequence?
Hi Timothy,
It is extremely easy to indicate the system which LED to light up at any point in time. You can even light up multiple tags at the same time if you want.
I’d be a little bit more concerned about how to power up the different tags since I expect them to be separated by a rather long space. You would either have to use a distributed reader solution (either with just antennas or complete readers) or figure out a different way of powering up the LED tags.
This is very application specific so feel free to drop me an email at mikel.choperena@farsens.com to check how we can help you.
Thanks!
Mikel
Mikel,
I am interested in creating a system with passive RFID tags and pick-by-light (a grocery store in manufacturing/assembly) that lights up different lights over part bins based on the value of the kit cart’s RFID tag’s attributes from a database. Have you heard of anybody doing this successfully? We have the RFID antennae and tags on the carts all installed for a different purpose, but I need help getting LEDs over the part bins to know when to light up. Thanks in advance!
Hi Haley!
The LED tags have a unique ID so you can target each of them and light them up whenever you want from the reader.
Luckily for you, this post is quite old and the new LED tags have a longer read range due to us using our new chip (Rocky100). Check the new tags here: http://www.farsens.com/en/products/eval01-stella-r/.
The solution should be relatively simple: you attach new LED tags to the bins and adjust the reader software to your needs. Basically, you’ll need to code when and how you want to light up the LEDs, based on the kit cart’s attributes as you say.
Just one thing: remember that the read range for battery free sensor tags is shorter than regular, just ID tags. You’ll have to make sure the LED tags are within the read range of the RFID reader to make them light up.
Feel free to drop me an email at mikel.choperena@farsens.com with further details. We’ll try and help as much as we can.
Cheers!
Mikel