Experimenting with a DIY RFID Table and Broadcast Overlay (4 Viewers)

Well, I for one am damp in all the right places over this little thread. Kudos to all the smart people on board. I've been dabbling with a similar idea for a blackjack table. Good luck, I'm watching with wonder!
 
I was doing research on this topic and stumble on this thread. I’m a full stack web developer if you need resources in this area. My tech stacks are different than what you are using (.Net, MSSQL, SignalR, React) but willing to learn to contribute.
 
The project will be open source and available on github once we reach a release version. In that, you'll have all the info you need to have the hardware produced by the PCB manufacturer of your choice and the corresponding software will be available on github as well (along with source code).

There are still enough variables at this point that I'm not comfortable throwing specific cost numbers around so I'll just say that an entire setup should be pretty affordable, especially as compared to existing solutions. I'd further generalize by saying that the cost of building this RFID setup into a table should be a fraction of the cost of your typical table build.

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Work being done of the rfidReader firmware, focusing lately on the captive portal that'll be used for initial reader configuration (connecting to wifi and pointing the reader's websocket connection to the rfidServer software):

View attachment 1192884

...and a little work being done on the rfidServer portal:

View attachment 1192885

Like I mentioned before, I have about zero UI creativity so we're just customizing a w3css template for now.

Hardware wise, still waiting on the new antennas from OshPark. Might start working on v0.3 of the rfidReader hardware which will focus on a better layout and implementing fixes/lessons learned from the previous two versions.

Hey! I just came across this thread, as I am looking to make a streaming/video setup for some home games I run. Wondering if there is any update on when the open source stuff or production version will be available?
Thank you!
 
Don’t know about OP, i hope hés doing fine.
On my part, big lack of motivation to continue the project, which usually happens when i consider something is « technically done »… :-/
 
Don’t know about OP, i hope hés doing fine.
On my part, big lack of motivation to continue the project, which usually happens when i consider something is « technically done »… :-/
I know how that goes all too well!

I took a break for a while, too, during the holidays, but I've been back at it for about a month now.

v3 of the reader board is about ready to be sent for production. It addresses various issues, but most importantly it hopefully allows me to more easily tune the antennas. I'm trying to meet the same level of performance I see from the pre-assembled PN5180 modules I've tested with (reliably reading 5-6 stacked cards).

With that, I'm turning my focus back to software again.

We're still months out from beta but there's progress being made.

1000006016.png
 
v3 board arrived today, initial testing shows a big improvement in RIFD/antenna performance even without any tuning attempted yet... really encouraging!


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I also added some flash memory to this revision to support the firmware requirements as they grow because I think they will as we get further into software development. Haven't tested it much yet, but it does seem to wake up and communicate so w00t

Very happy today!
 
Hi eightyWon!
really a great project that you are leading! What are the latest news ?
I am still actively working on this project most days and thinking about and/or researching something related to it daily.

A while ago I laid out the minimum requirements/functionally I felt I'd need to reach before offering a beta version for testing. Those included things like hardware performance as well as minimum software features/functionally. Since then, that's the stuff I've been focused on accomplishing.

A big part of those minimum requirements is antenna/reader performance. My goals are things like:
  • Able to reliably read 4 tightly stacked cards at 5cm with up to a 2m cable
  • Able to read at least 6 loosely stacked cards at 5cm with up to a 2m cable
  • Able to process all 16 antennas in under 5 seconds
With v3 of the board, we're getting very close to some of those goals. For instance, I'm now able to read 3 stacked cards at about 2.5cm, but 4 cards fails unless you spread them a bit. I'm able to read 2 stacked cards at 5cm, but not 2 stacks of 2 cards side-by-side.

I believe there are still improvements possible through antenna design and tuning which is what I'm working on now. This stuff, however, is something I have no previous experience with and it's a mix of science and black magic. I'm learning stuff every day and do feel like I'm making progress.

it's wild that we're less than a month away from the 2 year anniversary of this thread and it may seem that progress has been slow, but I'm extremely proud of what I've been able to accomplish so far. From the initial proof-of-concept, to designing my own hardware and full stack software development... to me, it's nothing short of amazing. There are whole teams dedicated to bringing projects like this to market, and I'm just some schlub in his basement.
 

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