RFID tags are great little pieces of technology, but unfortunately, the combination of paper, metal, and silicon means they are as bad as some modern pregnancy tests — single-use electronic devices that can’t be recycled.
A team of design program graduates from London’s Royal College of Art aim to change that. They’ve devised a mostly-paper RFID tag that’s as safe to recycle as a piece of paper with a pencil doodle on it.
The team’s startup, PulpaTronics have created a design that uses paper as its only material. The circuitry is marked on the paper with a laser set to low power, which doesn’t burn or cut the paper, but instead changes to composition to be conductive.
PulpaTronics were also able to create a chip-less RFID tag much the same way, using a pattern of concentric circles to convey information. The company estimates that these tags will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70%, when compared with traditional RFID tags. They’ll also cost about half as much.
RFID is used in many industries, but it’s also great for hacking. Here’s an 8-track player that harnesses the power of RFID tags to play songs off of an SD card.
Thanks for the tip, [gir.st]!
Err… the headline doesn’t seem to match the content… the article says “ a design that uses paper as its only material” – which is great news for disposable ones.
Did you mean plasticless?
“A pattern of concentric circles to convey information” like the ones shown could be good enough for anti-theft systems. But storing a full 14-digit GS-1 GTIN for POS purposes is somewhat more demanding, you’d need 50 or more resonators at different frequencies for that – and a much larger bandwith than currently allocated for RFID.
A GTIN can be expressed in 47 bits. But in retail GTIN-14 is rarely used outside of distribution centers since they are case-level identifiers. Checkout (POS) scanners use GTIN-13 (formerly known as EAN). which fits in 44 bits.
That’s correct, but you also need some bits for error detection and correction, the check digit alone wouldn’t be sufficient for this crude method.
Also I expect that at the retail level GTIN-13/12/8 will be replaced by GTIN-14 within a decade to avoid running out of numbers. GS-1 changed the GTIN reuse policy some years ago, now it’s practically no reuse and no multiple use. (blame international mail order for that.)
I could see this being printed right into a product label making the whole fridge inventory system hack a dream come true.