Back in April 2008, the Omni-ID Prox™ was second runner-up for the “Best in Show” Award at RFID Journal Live. We were all happy to be in the top 3 with our new product. But I immediately said to Tom, “Want to be in the top 3 again? Then we need to make a 100-foot tag.”

Long Range RFID Test Results

It’s over a year later, and the 100-foot RFID tag is now a reality. It’s an incredible breakthrough that we call the “Ultra”™. Before the Ultra, the longest range for passive tags had been about 60 feet. No RFID tag even approached a 100-foot read range. Watch the video to see the test results.

The reason 100 feet is such a big deal is that for the first time, a passive tag can work in applications previously reserved for semi passive and active tags. The annoying thing about active tags is the battery. I don’t mind the source of power, but what bothers me is the maintenance. They fail just when you need them most. I was one of the first engineers using those little solar-powered calculators, and it always had power. Passive tags are the same way – there is no battery to fail, they just work!

Real World Uses for 100 Foot Read Range Passive Tags

I live in New York, and we East-Coasters have to pay to use freeways. We all have an EZPass on our car, and in it is an active RFID tag. Passive tags have never worked for that application before, because a) cars are made of metal, and b) the signal just wasn’t strong enough to read from a tollbooth to a moving car.  In the current market, windshield passive tags are already taking over, and the Ultra can handle just about any traffic pattern or transport situation. Clearly there is a savings here not to mention the batteries that don’t have to be recycled.  Imagine, 100,000 people with EZPass changing their batteries every two years, in ten years that’s 500,000 batteries that have to be recycled!

RFID enthusiasts are always looking for better ways to track assets.  The Ultra passive tag is a cheaper and greener solution, and it won’t take long for this great technology to find all kinds of applications.   I can imagine – and I’ve discussed with customers – some interesting new uses for this long-range, battery-free tag, including:

• Use by airlines on Unit Load Containers to enable RFID asset tracking in air transport
• Use on parade floats – RFID signals would trigger special effects as the float passes an area
• Tracking of vehicle rental fleets – RFID ensures accurate vehicle return information
• Use on large equipment for asset tracking and maintenance records
• Use on containers for port entry identification
• Use on Public transit vehicles for real time tracking, buses, trains, taxis, etc.
• Use on power stations, transformers, and transmission line poles, as long range ID
• Use in shipyard and oil rig asset tracking systems

I’m sure you can think of many more uses that haven’t yet occurred to me!

Andre Coté

CTO and Vice President of Product Management

Innovation in our industry has to do with technology and products.

New inventions emerge because someone discovered something cool. But cool technology, in itself, is not enough to create value. The value of a new product or technology depends also on the technology’s utility and cost – and whether it solves a business problem.

I’ve been talking a lot about the term “value innovation”. This term is not new – it comes from an excellent book called Blue Ocean Strategy. Value innovation means driving innovation in ways that create value. The book discusses how one can use value innovation to create new market space, or a blue ocean, thereby making the competition irrelevant.

Creating New Markets

When Omni-ID released its first products a few years ago, we used blue ocean strategy to target the IT asset management market. The IT industry wasn’t using RFID at all, with good reason. At that time, RFID tags basically didn’t work in environments like a data center, which is full of metal. What’s more, IT equipment is covered with switches, indicators, and airflow grids, so there was no room for the large tags commonly used at that time.

Our technology created value for the IT industry. Because our technology creates a strong read range for the size of our tag, we were able to create an RFID tag, the Omni-ID Prox ™, with a small enough footprint, and a low enough profile, to fit on the surface of almost any electronic asset. The Prox has a read range of 8 feet in the US and is only 35mm x 10mm x 4mm, a size/read range combination that was unheard of when it was released. And because the Prox is balanced – meaning it works both on and off metal – it can be used on the complex variety of metal and plastic assets throughout the data center. We were able to offer a solution at a price point that worked for the industry, enabling them to manage thousands of data center assets more efficiently, and at lower cost, than they could without our technology.

Continued Value Innovation

Working closely with our customers, we have continued to create value for the IT industry. When customers needed a way to attach tags to a gridded surface or to cables, we developed the OmniTether attachment option. When they asked us for help with deploying tens of thousands of RFID tags, we developed the OnDemand ™ deployment solution, becoming the only on-metal RFID tag vendor with a solution for commissioning RFID tags at the customer site.

Eventually, RFID tags will be embedded in IT assets during the manufacturing process, and commissioning will take place in the supply chain. Omni-ID is already talking with IT manufacturers about this value innovation.

In the last year, competitors have joined us in the IT asset management market, and the IT industry can choose from several RFID tag vendors. A competitive playing field adds even more value for that industry, as it drives down costs.

For Omni-ID, however, it’s a signal for more value innovation. Through value innovation, we will continue to serve our existing markets, and also enter new markets, creating new blue oceans.

In a future blog post, our CTO, Andre Cote, will share with you a new form factor for a new market – our latest value innovation.