microchip toys to locate them advice please

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mrpowergage
 
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microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by mrpowergage »

Hi,

I've inherited a project last minute and I hope you can help.

We want to microchip a bunch of toys, and use a Pi to locate them in a school hall (and display their location graphically).

Any advice on what hardware to buy (and any code) would be hugely appreciated.

Many thanks.

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sj_remington
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by sj_remington »

Unless you are planning to walk around identifying individual objects using a microchip reader, you will find that "indoor localization" is difficult and expensive to implement.

Pozyx is one commercial outfit with a workable system. https://www.pozyx.io/

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mrpowergage
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by mrpowergage »

thank you sj_remington, identifying individual objects using a microchip reader would work for our case. what would we need to do this?

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sj_remington
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by sj_remington »

There are readers for any given type of microchip, and many are Arduino compatible. You don't need an RPi, unless that is already part of the project.

What have you so far considered for the microchip/reader combination? If the toys are located by hand (using a reader), how do you plan to enter location data into the system?

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mrpowergage
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by mrpowergage »

thanks, we're trying to share the principles of locating with microchips with year 4 kids. So if needed could just get them reading the location out and typing it in if needed. We need the project to be quick and easy and fairly cheap to implement.

I don't have any kit in mind at this point.

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sj_remington
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by sj_remington »

Since you are posting on the Adafruit forum, you might browse through their RFID/NFC options. Some of the tags qualify as microchips.

Otherwise, pet microchip readers are available on line.

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kevinjwalters
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by kevinjwalters »

You can get a signal strength indication from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so maybe those are a suitable? You don't get direction but Bluetooth low energy is adequate for approximate range in the 1m to 5m range (on the Adafruit CLUE). I tried using my body to block the signal to find sources (signal strength should go down if the signal's main path is blocked through your body) but it didn't seem to work well.

I wrote a scanner for the Adafruit CLUE which looks for advertisements from nearby devices, see Wireless: WiFi and Bluetooth: Proximity estimation using BLE.. Those Bose QuietCompact II headphones seemed to belt it out with 50m+ range!

You could probably do something similar with just the radio on the humble BBC micro:bit if you're after a low cost solution. Turns out you can Micro:bit: Make it: code it / Proximity beacon. Code is in MakeCode so the children can write it / understand it too.

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kevinjwalters
 
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Re: microchip toys to locate them advice please

Post by kevinjwalters »

@mrpowergage, how did it go in the end?

I'm sure you saw it but there's also the Micro:bit: Make it: code it / Treasure hunt project on that site for the V1 or V2 micro:bit.

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