Intuiface + RFID: Combining The Digital With The Physical For A Unified Experience

Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags are a low energy, low profile and low cost means of uniquely identifying items in the physical world. Intuiface can easily work side-by-side with RFID tag readers, responding in context to the presence or removal of tags. Must be hard, right? In fact, to work with RFID readers all you need are basic Intuiface skills and we've built a sample experience to prove it. Intuiface offers RFID solutions for all your projects.

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But before we get to that, here's an example of how RFID technology is being used to create engaging and memorable experiences today. It's the "lift and learn" scenario in retail. Lift an item off a shelf and a digital display presents the shopper with information about that item. The shelf usually contains multiple items and may even present the ability to compare multiple lifted items side by side.

Here's Intuiface at work, showing you lift and learn in action near a cozy couch in our home office.

For this scenario to work, a sensor in the shelf must detect the removal of an item. When RFID is involved, each item on the shelf is uniquely tagged and a tag reader notes when any one or more of those tags are lifted from the shelf. The reader knows the ID of the removed tag and communicates it with something that then presents information about that item.

Intuiface experiences can communicate with RFID readers. In fact, for some RFID readers, support is built-in. For other readers, a simple interface asset is required. In either case, Intuiface can receive the tag ID and use it to do anything it is capable of, including the presentation of in-context information.

We've created a new sample experience illustrating three RFID-based scenarios. This experience is built to work with PhidgetRFID readers (they're just $60 a piece) and thus can be used with actual tags. However, the experience can also simulate tag use. The three scenarios are:

This experience is free to download and use. In it you'll discover how easy it is to work with RFID tag readers. Keep in mind, all of this is possible with just the cost of Intuiface licenses. There is no professional service overhead. You could literally be saving tens of thousands of dollars.

To download our free RFID-themed experience, click here or grab it from the Examples tab of the Experiences panel in Intuiface Composer and Player And to learn more about how to prepare Intuiface for use with RFID readers, see this article in our online library.