NFC or RFID scanner connection to Ignition

My plant is wanting to go paperless by replacing printed barcodes with NFC or RFID chips. My boss has demonstrated to me how he got an Android to read NFC using an app called NFC Tools and wants me to figure out how to get reading and writing tags working via Ignition. I can’t find anything suggesting that this is currently possible. Has anyone managed to do this?

I figure if we can at least get it to function like a keyboard, I could make it work the way I have done with QR code scanning, using a Perspective view with a hidden focused text input. I’m not sure that would help with writing to the tags, though.

Barcode Scanner Input component would be your friend if you have a RFID/NFC reader that mimics a keyboard input.

I used a USB device that read badges via RFID with this method.

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In Perspective, I created a sign off sheet for our training events where our employees use their RFID badges to log in to the training. I am using a Barcode Scanner Input object with a script on onActionPerformed to validate the data, and save it to a database.

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I have not used this personally, but there is an NFC session event too.
Perspective Session Event Scripts | Ignition User Manual

This only works with the perspective app on your phone. I think the barcode scanner object with a usb reader is the way to go.

Right, but he didn't mention what device he would be using.

Checkout these guys. https://rf-controls.com They have API access that you could probably use with their readers (which are pretty cool in themselves) for both reading and writing. I was looking into them at my prior job prior to departing. Their stuff definitely looked interesting.

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Ha! That’s actually were I worked at my last job…

That's awesome. They're stuff looked cool. Does it actually perform as well as it appears it should?

Yes, it’s pretty impressive. I worked mostly on a JavaFX application that tests and calibrates all the components during their production. Those antennas are WAY more than we need here, and certainly way too expensive.

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Are you looking for handheld scanning or a scanning gateway/curtain?

Does this mean writing data to the RFID chips from Ignition? Or does it mean taking the read data and writing it to Ignition tags?

Writing data from Ignition to the chips. We currently print barcodes with unique IDs, and want to go paperless by putting those IDs onto chips instead.

So, whatever it takes to write to them, and then probably a gateway/curtain setup at various machines with a monitor that displays info. as the chips roll by.

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Sounds like a driver project for fixed mount interfaces. UIs to display tag data from the driver.

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We use SATO printers for our labeling needs. They offer label printers that can write to the rfid tags and print on the labels at the same time.

I have not done this, but my understanding is that you can provide the rfid data to be encoded through the printer driver.

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