PN532 RFID vs ID20LA RFID vs Other Tech?

[DarthVadersMom]

Hey,

I'm working on an project to track Model Railroad cars using RFID. The idea is that I have a reader attached to an Arduino Yun with both of these attached to the bottom of a table and when a railroad car passes over it, I want to read and send it to a PC Database using the Yun's wifi. So far everything is working fine except that I'm having issues getting consistent reads using the Id20LA RFID Reader (http://id-innovations.com/httpdocs/Modu ... ite%29.htm), it seems that I'm out of the range of the reader.

Another issue is that the railroad cars often have metal weights in the bottom that would sit between the tag and the reader. With the ID20, I am unable to read through this and I have to glue the tag to the bottom of the car, its not the end of the world, but putting the tag inside the car would be preferred.

How does the Pn532 compare with the ID20? I know that they use different tag frequencies and that they are not compatible with each other. Does the higher frequency mean I could get better range/be able to read through the metal car weight?

I'd also be open to any other suggestions of ways I could do something like this outside of RFID.

I've attached an image of what I'm trying to do.

Thanks! I'd appreciate any help/suggestions :-)

[Franklin97355]

Not having the RFID boards to check I'll leave that to others but if I were doing this I would drill through the 3/4 inh board and mount the reader just under the roadbed. I'd also remove the aluminium weight, attach the tag to the bottom of the car and add an equivalent amount of lead to weight the car.