Week 4: Input/Output

This week in class we learned about input and output devices. One input device that I found to be interesting is  Radio Frequency Identification or "RFID". RFID is a simple system that transmits the identity of an object or person wirelessly using radio waves. RFID is a microchip that can be as small as a half a millimeter and can be mounted on materials such as plastic, cotton, or paper. We learned that there are two types of RFID chips, Active and Passive tags. The main difference here is that active tags mean that they are battery powered and passive tags mean that there is no battery needed. Since the active tags are battery powered this allows them to have an improved operating range. These can be used in cars as speed passes because the range from the receiver can be greater than 100 meters and can be read at speeds up to 100 MPH. The more commonly used passive tags have ranges less than 3 meters but are much more cheaper then the active tags due to the lack of battery.

For my company these tags could be extremely useful for sorting out deliveries. RFID tags are much more efficient and accurate than using bar codes on my packages. When packages full of video games come in these RFID tags would enable me to do a mass scan with just one RFID reader. The tags would include shipping information so my company would then be able to easily sort out each box and deliver them accordingly. I'm guessing that my company would at some point have massive amounts of deliveries to sort through at some point and if we were still using barcodes it would take a very long time to sort through each box because you would have to scan one at a time. This would greatly delay my shipping time and probably make me lose customers due to slow delivery time. RFID tags greatly decrease this time it takes to scan and makes the shipping process that much faster, keeping my customers happy with my service.