Radio waves
instead of barcodes.
A reader sends energy, a tag without a battery wakes up and answers with its number. No line of sight, hundreds of tags a second. I spent 2017–2021 making that work on real docks and trucks in Chile — this is what I learned.
The reader transmits continuously. A passive tag harvests a little of that field, wakes up and reflects part of it back, modulated with its identifier — “backscatter”. In logistics that identifier is usually an EPC, which can carry the same GS1 product number that sits under a barcode.
Frequencies
| Band | Frequency | Typical range | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|---|
| LF | 125–134 kHz | a few cm | Animal ID, old access cards |
| HF / NFC | 13.56 MHz | cm up to ~1 m | Payment, libraries, phones |
| UHF | 865–868 MHz EU · 902–928 MHz US | up to ~10 m | Logistics, retail, vehicles — where I worked |
UHF passive tags follow EPC Gen2 (ISO/IEC 18000-63).
Where it fails
Most failed pilots I saw were not software problems. Metal reflects UHF and detunes tags placed on it; liquids absorb it. Orientation matters, and so does density — a pallet of tightly packed tags reads worse than the same tags spread out. The fix is physical: on-metal tags, antenna position, and a test on the real dock before anyone writes code.
And a read is only an event — tag X seen by antenna Y at time Z. It becomes useful when the ERP knows what it means: a receipt, a transfer, a delivery. That translation is a process question before it is an integration question.
Videos
⚠️ Placeholders — the Vimeo embeds go here.
Projects
Chrono Machines
Co-founder. RFID and IoT to track and control operations in logistics and transport — software and hardware teams, complex B2B sales.
Impinj partner training
Seattle. UHF readers, antennas and tag selection.
Microsystem
External consultant: demos, business development and training in industrial RFID.