RFID Toys: 11 Cool Projects for Home, Office and Entertainment

RFID is one of the hot technologies these days, but it still seems to be something more suited to business applications and such. Amal Graafstra has bridged that gap in RFID Toys and shows how you can use RFID technology in your everyday life in order to make some things more simple (and to impress your other geek friends).

Contents: Getting Started with RFID; Getting in the Front Door; Stepping into Your Car; Logging into Windows XP Using RFID; Building an RFID-Enabled Safe; Taking Inventory with an RFID-Enabled Smart Shelf; Letting Fido in with an RFID Pet Door; Tracking Employees and Time with Active RFID; Monitoring Assets and Sending Alerts; The Three R’s - Reading, wRiting, and RFID; Extreme RFID; Hardware Overview; Index

Graafstra is well qualified to speak on this subject. He’s had himself “chipped” in order to control a number of the devices in his home (like his door locks). There’s a little bit of background on how RFID works, and then he dives right into the projects. In order to build the devices he talks about, you really need to be adept at using tools like soldiering irons, xacto knives, drills, and so on. In most cases, you’ll be hacking existing devices and modifying their form factor in order to integrate them into other things. For instance, logging onto Windows XP via RFID involve opening up a keyboard, clearing out an area in the wristrest, modifying the RFID device to fit the smaller area, and then all the associated wiring involved in tying it all together. If you’re not comfortable with hardware, you’ll likely find many of these projects rather daunting. And bottom line, I’m not letting *anyone* cut me open to put in an RFID chip. :)

This is a very good book if you’re looking to understand the bridge between RFID theory and implementation. Even if you don’t build any of the devices, you’ll start to get an idea as to how RFID might change the way we live our lives on a daily basis.