Companies seeking to engage in data collection for the IoT would be well served by remembering such simple technological solutions as RFID.
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. It’s a technology that uses radio waves to write or read information stored on a “tag”. A tag consists of a chip and an antenna, which can come in many forms.
Capture Technologies, a technology company that provides on-site tools and services to tradeshows and events, started in 2000, specializes in creating RFID-enabled badges and also onsite assistance.
“Our original focus was based upon a universally compatible lead retrieval, which is the process of scanning badges to obtain attendee data at tradeshows for sales follow up,” said Christopher Havens, CTO and founder, Capture Technologies. “Being involved with so many different types of badges, it was a natural progression to start producing badges for our own customer’s events.”
The tags are combined into a wet label (sticker), which gets applied to the company’s badges. Capture uses this technology to track attendance and or measure the movement of attendees at tradeshows and events.
There are many different types of badges. Most have the same basic requirements, which are custom artwork printing, embedding the RFID tag, and then personalization and encoding. Capture works with vendors to create the badge and pre-print the custom artwork. The badge specifications are obtained from their clients, such as sizes and artwork, and are then provided to their vendor to produce the badge.
Badge costs can range from under $0.20 per badge for standard paper up to $3.00 per badge for a plastic full color with embedded RFID.
Capture Technologies offers on-site assistance and there are many factors that can go into pricing an event, for example, the size of the event, number of attendees, services provided and even length of the event all can affect the overall cost to the show organizer. Some events, usually smaller ones, can be self-managed and can be as low as $5,000 for equipment and software licenses. When the event is larger, with a greater presence and much more strategic approach, can cost the vendor approximately $80,000.
With simple solutions like RFID tagging, the cost of data acquisition can drop dramatically for companies looking for an entry-level way into the IoT.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
