Four kinds of tag, and what happens to the data.
Which tag suits which job, what each one looks like at work in a building, where each one struggles, and the path a read takes inside uCAAT 2.0. Most projects use more than one kind.
- Tested
- On your own items, during the site walk
What each tag is good for, and where it struggles
Pick a tag to see it at work in the same building. The site walk decides which goes where, based on tests with your actual items.
Tags with a small battery, heard by a gateway in each room. You always know which room an item or a person is in. Staff ID badges work the same way.
- Good for
- Knowing the room at all times, climate readings, and staff ID badges with a help button.
- Where it struggles
- The battery needs replacing every few years, and the tag is larger than a label, so it suits equipment more than small items.
Tags with no battery. They charge up from the radio signals around them: a small power unit in the room, and Wi-Fi and phone signals already in the air. Once charged, a tag sends its number and the gateway hears it. Built for thousands of items.
- Good for
- Thousands of lower-value items that still need room-level visibility, such as packaging and returnable containers, and door crossings.
- Where it struggles
- Signals already in the air are rarely enough on their own, so most rooms get a power unit. Readings arrive less often than a battery tag's.
Labels with no battery. The reader's radio wave powers the label for an instant, and the label answers with its number. A handheld counts a whole room in one walk, and readers at doors log every item that passes.
- Good for
- Stock counts, doorways, and large numbers of items.
- Where it struggles
- Directly on metal and through liquids, unless we use tags made for metal. It is read at doors and by handhelds, not continuously everywhere.
Tags with a battery that send very short radio pulses. Anchors on the walls time each pulse, and uCAAT 2.0 works out where the tag is, to within about half a metre, live. Used where the room is not enough.
- Good for
- The exact spot in a large hall or yard, forklifts and vehicles, and people in hazardous areas.
- Where it struggles
- Each area needs three or four powered anchors in view of the tag, so it takes more hardware than room-level tracking, and the tag battery needs changing.
Room by room, or the exact spotWith Bluetooth and RFID, uCAAT 2.0 shows which room or zone an item is in, which is enough for most searches. A large open area can be split into smaller zones if you need to narrow a search. Where the room is not enough, UWB shows the exact spot.
One read, from the reader to your report
Picture a crate carried from a store room to the loading dock. The reader on the dock door hears its tag. This is what happens next inside uCAAT 2.0, and it is the same whichever kind of tag was read.
Tag
The tag on the crate holds a number and nothing else. What the crate is, and where it belongs, lives in the software.
Reader
The dock reader hears the number and sends it on with the time and the reader's own name. Usually it hears the same tag several times a second.
Collected
Every read is stored exactly as it arrived. If anything later goes wrong, the original is still there to check against.
Checked
The repeat reads become one move. The tag is matched to "Crate 0417". A tag nobody has registered is flagged instead of guessed at.
Ready
A clean record: Crate 0417 left the store room and entered the loading dock at 14:02. Only this layer feeds screens, alerts and reports.
What you see
The crate's row shows the dock. If a rule says crates should not leave today, an alert goes out. The move appears in this week's report.
Battery-free Bluetooth tags take one extra step at the start. Their signal is decoded by the tag maker's service, and the decoded reading then comes back to uCAAT 2.0 and follows the same path from step 3.
Hosted, or inside your building
Most clients use uCAAT 2.0 as a hosted service. We run the servers, apply updates and keep backups, and your staff sign in from a browser or the Windows app.
Some sites cannot depend on an internet connection, such as a restricted area that has to alarm every time, whatever the network is doing. For those, the whole system runs on a server inside your building, on your own network. The screens and the alerts are the same.
Either way, if a connection drops, the app keeps showing the last data it saved, and scans made during the gap are kept and sent once it is back.
See it on your own site.
The site walk is where we test tags on your items and find out what will work. Tell us roughly what you want to track and where.
Or email contact@avnisynapse.com
- We reply within one business day.
- A short call to understand the site and what you want to fix.
- If it looks like a fit, we book the site walk. If it does not, we say so.