Equipment Tracking with RFID and/or Barcodes

Hello all,

I took on a new challenge at work with updating a few systems. One is just a more dynamic way to track key serial numbers that can likely be done with a simple database and an application so it's more intuitive for others to use. The second thing I'm working on, however, is something I'm not at all familiar with. In the past, I've used Matlab pretty extensively for aeronautical engineering, but I'm not very experienced in using it in the way that I'm looking to now.

I essentially need create a program that will connect to either an RFID reader, barcode scanner, or both, and keep track of what tools are signed out and who signs them out, and potentially where they sign them out too (GPS for larger and expensive equipment). This is still in the very early stages, and I haven't put in enough work to ask specific questions yet, but I figured I'd see if the community had any resources or experience using matlab to connect to external devices, and could offer some general tips or researching material to have those devices function in the way I'm thinking.

On a related note, I am planning on running this off of a RasberryPI. I know that MATLAB has a support package for PI, but I also haven't used that, would it be possible for it to work with something like this?

Answer 1

[Akshat Dalal]

Hello Tyler,

I understand that you want to create an inventory management system using RFID and/or Barcode Scanners that can store details about the items being leased, the lease owner as well as the location of the lease.

This is possible using MATLAB and a similar project had been presented at MATLAB EXPO UK 2013. You can leverage it to develop your project. To read more about that, please refer to the following documentation - https://web.archive.org/web/20180110142455/http://makerzone.mathworks.com/blog/custom-rfid-with-arduino-and-raspberry-pi/

To find the location of the lease, you could leverage the “gpsdev” System object from the Navigation Toolbox. You can connect the “gpsdev” object to a GPS receiver on your tools which can then be used to get the geographical location. To read more about “gpsdev” and its examples, please refer the following documentation - https://in.mathworks.com/help/nav/ref/gpsdev-system-object.html