Smart Periodic Inventory Tutorial

Overview

This Tutorial provides a walk-through of the steps to perform Smart Periodic Inventory operation using RFID3 API

Create The Project

• Start by creating a new project in Android Studio. For help, see the Android Studio tutorial.
• Refer Hello RFID to prepare basic setup to work with RFID Reader and then follow this guide

Details

A Smart Periodic Inventory operation reads all tags in the field of view on all antennas of the connected RFID reader. By default the start trigger is set to START_TRIGGER_TYPE_SMART_PERIODIC_INVENTORY and stop trigger is set to STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_DURATION

Below is the table for supported Strat Trigger type.

Start Trigger Type	Mandatory	OFF
START_TRIGGER_TYPE_IMMEDIATE	NA	YES
START_TRIGGER_TYPE_PERIODIC	NA	NA
START_TRIGGER_TYPE_GPI	NA	NA
START_TRIGGER_TYPE_SMART_PERIODIC_INVENTORY	YES	NA

Below is the table for supported Stop Trigger type.

Stop Trigger Type	Mandatory	OFF
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_IMMEDIATE	NA	YES
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_DURATION	YES	YES
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_GPI_WITH_TIMEOUT	NA	NA
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_TAG_OBSERVATION_WITH_TIMEOUT	NA	YES
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_N_ATTEMPTS_WITH_TIMEOUT	NA	YES
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_HANDHELD_WITH_TIMEOUT	NA	NA
STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_ACCESS_N_ATTEMPTS_WITH_TIMEOUT	NA	NA

Setting it up

Event configuration to setup operation

  // tag event with tag data
  reader.Events.setTagReadEvent(true);
  // application will collect tag using getReadTags API
  reader.Events.setAttachTagDataWithReadEvent(false);                                                      

Performing Smart Periodic Inventory Operation

start and stop inventory calls

  try {
        // perform simple inventory 
        reader.Actions.Inventory.perform();

        // Sleep or wait
        Thread.sleep(5000);

        // stop the inventory 
        reader.Actions.Inventory.stop();

    } catch (InvalidUsageException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (final OperationFailureException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }                                                      

Overriding the default time(milliseconds) for Period and RF On time. Here is an example for Smart Periodic Inventory with 30% Duty cycle (Period: 500, RF On time: 150)

Duty cycle = (RF On Time)/Period.The minimum duty cycle can be set to 20% and maximum duty cycle can be set to 50%.

try {
    triggerInfo = new TriggerInfo();
    triggerInfo.StartTrigger = new StartTrigger();
    triggerInfo.StopTrigger = new StopTrigger();
    triggerInfo.StartTrigger.setTriggerType(START_TRIGGER_TYPE_SMART_PERIODIC_INVENTORY);
    triggerInfo.StartTrigger.Periodic.setPeriod(500);

    triggerInfo.StopTrigger.setTriggerType(STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE.STOP_TRIGGER_TYPE_DURATION);
    triggerInfo.StopTrigger.setDurationMilliSeconds(150);


    return  reader.Actions.Inventory.perform(null, triggerInfo, null);
} catch (Exception e) {
    
}

Grab the results

Gets results in eventreadnotify when reader starts reporting the read tags

public void eventReadNotify(RfidReadEvents e) {
    TagData[] myTags = reader.Actions.getReadTags(100);
        if (myTags != null) {
            for (int index = 0; index < myTags.length; index++) {
                Log.d(TAG, "Tag ID " + myTags[index].getTagID());
            }
        }
    }

Closer look

• API call Inventory.perform() starts operation on reader
• API call Inventory.stop() stops operation on reader
• API call getReadTags request to retrieve 100 tags from SDK's internal queue of tags, one can change this number as per tag reading speed or application processing speed

What's Next

• Print various status notification in eventStatusNotify to see inventory start and stop events
• setAttachTagDataWithReadEvent to true and receive each tag data in RfidReadEvents