I had exactly the same thought. Looking closer at the photo of the board, I see that there is a tiny U.FL antenna connector. Now looking for an antenna geometry that could work for automatic finish-line detection in a foot-race (marathon, etc.)
Hi, I bought SparkFun Simultaneous RFID Reader - M6E Nano for a project. I powered it up with the Arduino Uno, did not attach any external antenna Just the Interface Cable RP-SMA to U.FL and the distance I am getting is just some inches. Help required to do the distance test.
Hello, I got this kit last month and experimenting with the range. I find the range is maximum of 5 feet (in a particular direction only) when powered from external power supply and the read power set to 15dBm. Before I experiment with external antenna I wanted to explore and understand the beam width, gain, directivity and other details of the PCB trace antenna. So I have following question. What is type of PCB trace antenna used in SEN14066 SparkFun Simultaneous RFID Reader - M6E Nano ? Can anyone point me to the datasheet of the PCB trace antenna used in SEN14066 ? Thanks in advance
I'm curious... Is it safe to assume that it can read a particular tag multiple times while a Frisbee is airborne? Does it take into account that a single tag could have multiple RSSI values depending on the timing of the read or is the tag just read once and wherever the frisbee happened to be at the moment is the RSSI that is recorded? I'm looking into using this module for inventory purposes and just want to understand how it works.
SWETTY hit the ARDUINO BOARD + RFID SENSOR BOARD for the win!!!! And the other guy on the audio said (OH WHAAAAAATTTT!!!)... can't believe his eyes. It seems that the ON-BOARD antenna of the RFID sensor was not bypassed by the HIGH GAIN ANTENNA. If that is the case, then the BOARDS should have been placed at the back of the HIGH GAIN ANTENNA...
Hi huys, very interested, If it is connected to an arduino compatible board , could it be power up to 27 dBi? what type of antenna connector does it have? I did not see it on the pics.
Hey! You probably shouldn't turn it up to 27dBi while powering it through the Arduino's power connector (and voltage regulator) but you could supply an appropriate 5Vdc source to the shield itself through the battery pin. Running at full transmit power, the module will probably require an additional heatsink and possibly active cooling. it's a small part and that's a lot of energy.
Thanks for you reply, nice piece of hardware, for applications where not much power is require and not many tags to read, it could be an inexpensive solution.
It is possible that his wasn't the closet, but actually just the closest that was also most in-plane with the antenna. For what it's worth, though, a few of us were able to consistently predict the winner based on just watching the frisbees. In other words, while signal strength isn't _always_ a great indication of distance, it almost always lined up with our observation. The fact that this module was able to pick out a dozen spinning tags whizzing past the antenna still blows my mind.
Are you sure that it read a dozen? i can only see maximum 2 different readings... I'm planning to buy this board and to read simultaneously a lot of tags... I read somewhere that it doesn't work as expected
It's steep, granted, but I'm afraid there's not a lot we can do. The module itself comes in well over $100. Until someone develops a less expensive alternative, we believe there are people who will pay a premium for hardware, documentation, support and the opportunity to play with a cool thing.
If you're really interested in it, you can always purchase the parts and build your own. SparkFun has all the design documentation (including PCB layout) on their website. But the cheapest retail place I could find to purchase the module apart from SparkFun was $125. By the time you add the other components and PCB printing, you're probably not going to save much.
