RFID For Dummies®

Chapter 8

Testing One, Two, Three: Developing Your Own Lab

In This Chapter

Gathering the equipment you need to build a lab

Figuring out the best location and design for your lab

Developing standard lab tests and evaluating the results

I magine yourself in the woods of Switzerland back in the year 1307. You’ve got to shoot an apple off your son’s noggin’ or die. Do you just go out to your local sporting goods store, pick up a bow, and take a shot? Of course not, and neither would William Tell. He spent hours honing his skills and creating and testing bow designs before he became the expert marksman who let that famous shot fly. How do you hone your skills and create perfect designs for RFID before you make a huge investment in your production system? By putting together a well-planned and -organized lab. That is your key to becoming the William Tell of the RFID world.

As I mention throughout this book, understanding physics holds the key to a successful RFID deployment. But physics can be a fickle thing: Because you can’t see how radio frequency waves change and behave, you have to find other means for knowing what happens with certain combinations of hardware, antennas, tags, and ...