Patrick Plaggenborg

Earlier I mentioned the CompactFlash RFID Reader Card by Socket Communications. After the Mobile Bristol Toolkit this device was my second choice. It’s shipping with a demo application to read and write tags and SocketScan software sending virtual keystrokes (called wedge software) to any active application on the Pocket PC.

The Mobile Bristol toolkit was my first choice because of the nice integration with reader and the application. Sending virtual keystrokes is not such a tidy solution, but it does the trick.

Before rushing out to order the Socket reader there is another bump to take. The SocketScan software does not automatically recognise RFID tags in range. The user will have to assign a hardware button to a small application doing the actual scan. This can be any PDA’s hardware buttons. Another option is the Socket Trigger software displaying a small window that is always on top. This window can be tapped to activate the scanner. The trigger software is not such an esthetic solution, but assigning a hardware button will do.

Most of the Flash players however disable the hardware buttons completely or allow the user to remap them to keyboard keys. In fact, all of the 3rd party applications mentioned in the PocketPCMag article as well as the Mobile Bristol Toolkit make Windows functionality for the hardware buttons useless. A big problem, because this renders the SocketScan software and thus the Socket RFID Reader useless!

Fortunately the Standalone Flash Player by Adobe itself is acting like a normal Pocket PC application and does not disable the hardware buttons. It’s the Flash Player 6 though, but for my purposes this is just fine. The recently released mdm ZINC V2 Pocket PC player is able to create standalone Flash projectors and is using the latest version Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC. This application also doesn’t harm normal hardware button assignments. Additionally it comes with a lot of extra Fscommands to extend functionality. But because creating programs for it with the Windows application is quite a workaround, and the Adobe Flash Player will just load ordinary .swf files I did not go for Zinc. Its price tag is also a con.

The SocketScan wedge software allows you to create a prefix and a suffix around the tag’s data when sending it as virtual keystrokes. I chose to wrap it in ‘(’ and ‘)’ characters, for example: (4313750134). With a Flash class listening to keypresses the start and end character can be recognised and the actual tag ID can be used as parameter in other methods.

There has been miscommunication with HP Labs Bristol. Their Mobile Bristol Toolkit has interesting support for use of RFID tags. The editor software allows you to assign actions for RFID tags coming in range of the reader. Also losing a tag (a read tag is going out of range) can get certain actions. Although at first I was told the toolkit needed the ACG CF RFID Reader, when speaking to their technical staff I was told only the next release of their toolkit is going to have support for RFID! This future release, scheduled for around September, is coming too late for me.

I’m currently working on the user interface of my project in Adobe Flash. The Mobile Bristol Toolkit has excellent full screen support. Their Pocket PC client is basically running Pocket Internet Explorer in a fullscreen application. In the HTML page loaded a Flash movie is loaded fullscreen as well (240×320 in my case). The toolkit is able to directly call functions in the Flash movie with its actions on RFID reads.

It looked like the perfect application for a PDA to create graphically interesting RFID applications. The future will not have Flash support. Instead, the MB client software will have timeline support of its own. I can’t imagine the possibilities will be able to meet Flash’ possibilities, but maybe it’s going to be very flexible after all.

For my project hearing this is quite dissapointing. I will have to try to return my reader and will have to look into the possibilities of other RFID readers.