RadioFrequency Identification RFID

Charlie Edmondson probably can intervene here and tell us a lot about toll roads ;-)

Keep in mind that most RFID systems have pretty short range: "Best case on discrete tag was about 22 feet... limited by FCC and ambient noise" as reported by one of my clients when I inquired about range.

...Jim Thompson

Well I live in Mexico and plan to implement it in Mexico city´s streets, so I think I have to do some research in regulations also. Thank you,

Would you happen to know any source where I could get some more technical information?

:-) I{m sorry but I don´t really know who Charlie Edmonson is, JAJAJA

Charlie is a lurker here and a Cadence/PSpice support person, but also is a designer who created some of the features of southern California's toll roads ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Are you planning on installing new transponders for this application? If so, who would pay for it and why? If it is a use in which the driver is somehow penalized for being sensed, you would encourage the drivers to defeat the system. If, on the other hand, it gave the driver better service in some way, it might be easily accepted.

I am not familiar with Mexican laws, but if you are going to piggyback off existing transponders, there may be some legal issues there using it for different purposes. Privacy invasion may also be a legal or social deterrent.

Thad

Well, I believe everything would be new, because there is nothing installed in the streets of our cities. Still I have to do a lot of research about the technology and equipment needed to implment the system, which I´ll describe in the next lines so you get a better idea and maybe help me a little bit more. For example I´m not sure what is to piggiback off existing transponders or how to do it.

In mexico cities like any city around the world we have a lot of public urban transportation mostly buses, they move around the city and stop in some specific places so that a person annotates in a piece of paper the hour:minute they went through so that their drivers performance is evaluated and the position of the bus "monitored". They have to go through this "stops" and they want to, so it´s a good service for the driver, and the owner of the vehicles.

So, my hypotesis is that a monitoring system, based on RFID could substitute this person and also give a plus like being able to communicate with the rest of the system and integrate the data into a database so that everything can be seen from the administrative or supervising staff´s computer system.

I don´t know if this is too expensive or impossible to implement but I´ve to learn, try and see what comes from this idea.

Thank you,

Ricardo Garcia

A GPS recevier and a data logger would be more effective. You don't have to worry about something going wrong with equipment located at each stop, it can track the exact route, and give the time an location for every stop, not just at the bus stops. It not only keeps the driver on schedule as much as possible, but if you archive the data, it might help in a lawsuit against a fraudulent claim.

Reminds me that my son worked on software for a commercial-truck-tracking project where GPS plus a two-way pager were used to report locations. No RFID required, and trivial to install.

...Jim Thompson