Simultaneous long range rfid scanner for towels?

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1

Hi folks,

I’m looking for a part very similar to the now discontinued SparkFun Simultaneous RFID Reader - M6E Nano for use in a towel dispensary scanning application.

The unit needs to be triggered to scan multiple tags at once and then output the tag IDs via RS485, Serial, or similar.

There are commercial systems that achieve what I’m after, but I’m trying to achieve the same solution in house.

Any ideas please?

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Hi Peter, Welcome to the forum!

Could you share a bit more about what you need your system to do? We may be able to brainstorm alternative solutions for you.

It’s worth noting though that at the time of writing we still do have one of the M6E units on shelf, so if you can get the tags elsewhere and only need one reader, you grab that 1 unit from our stock. Our supplier is out of stock though, so that’s all we can supply.

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Thanks James.

We (the company I work for) are building a bespoke system to track the movements of RFID embedded towels throughout a gym.

We’re going to have 2 dispensary cupboards that are accessed by a RFID fob badge that members can take 1 or more towels from and then at least 3 return bins for the towels to be returned to after use.

We need to know who has taken what towel from the dispensary and who has returned their towels before they leave the site.

My plan was the scan the towel IDs in the dispensary before the door opens and then scan it again afterwards to track the towel inventory, and then also run periodic scans on the return bins. We’d likely also have at least one scanner mounted near the gym exit to track stolen towels.

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I was trying to build a system like this for tradies so that could tag all their tools and point a reader at their truck and get a tick that they had everything there.
I wish that I had known about this reader before I canned the project.

That aside, wouldnt it be far simpler to modify the towel dispensing so that they need to scan their card to GET a towel, then scan to return it?
RFID chip the towels still and record that that particular towel was scanned out by that ID, then you know not only which towels are missing but who has nicked the towel.

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