[Vanhackspace] Hardware for people/inventory tracking

[Bob Cook]

Hi Gavin,

The simplest thing you could make is a cradle for each item, with a small switch inside each cradle. When the phone/gadget/etc. is in the cradle it depresses the switch. When removed, the switch is opened. This switch event can be recorded by the microcontroller of your choice. This is likely cheaper and easier than implementing any sort of wireless tracking beacon e.g. rfid. It doesn't really help to track people though, but your description below made it somewhat unclear whether that was an actual requirement.

Hope that helps!

Bob Cook

On 2010-07-22, at 3:13 PM, Gavin wrote:

> Hi Hackspace.
> 
> Long time lurker, but kinda curious about feedback for an project.
> 
> We have various small items (cellphones) that are tracked manually here at work. Usually not a problem, but once in a while during rushes, people grab an item, and forget to sign it out. So I was trying to think of a nice system that could track a tagged item from leaving the container, and signal an arduino or laptop on which specific item it is.
> I'm at a loss for what could be used relatively cheaply to track items like that. 
> It doesn't need a lot of range, or to be tracked where it is, just that its being removed from some sort of holding container.
> 
> Thanks,
> Gavin
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