Open Source RFID. Introduction & Benefits

Transcription

1 Open Source RFID Introduction & Benefits

2 Agenda Open Source Introduction History Concepts Benefits to RFID Open Source Resources Sourceforge.net (Interactive) Open Source and RFID Open Source RFID Community Rifidi Introduction (Interactive) TagCentric Introduction (Interactive) Impact on Industry 2

3 Agenda Next Steps Getting Involved Getting Help Bugs and Feature Requests RFID Community Question & Answer 3

4 Open Source - History Open Source History Very old concept that goes back to academic sharing of knowledge 1984 MIT Hacker Richard Stallman creates GNU project to provide free and open Unix tools such as gcc (unprecendented at that time) Stallman also creates the first ever open source license that says that any code that uses or changes this code must also be open and free Student named Linus Torvalds attempt to put together a full operating system kernel. Uses much of GNU s work and takes on GPL license. Open Source Today Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the world both in terms of features, performance and users Enterprise tools such as Apache, JBoss (J2EE) and SugarCRM have proven that the Open Source model can build quality software comparable to and sometimes better than commercial software Open Source is extremely agile and can change quickly to meet the needs of it s user community 4

5 Open Source - Concepts Open Source (OSS) is community built software It offers the ability for user s to directly interact with developers and also let s them become developers too. Open Source code has an inherent QA process. Developers take more care before releasing code and anyone is free to try to identify flaws in the code Open Source allows an unparalleled level of customization and also allows you the user to modify the code to your needs if the community can t Many different forms of licensing but all allow the ability to get free, open code and also modify it for internal use. 5

6 Benefits to RFID Most current and prospective RFID users agree that the following barriers make RFID a tough sell. Limited access to hardware and software No clear best practices or proven technology Expensive software platforms for small/mid-size implementations RFID has a bad reputation of being very closed, expensive and not worth the high barriers to entry Open Source can remove RFID s barriers to entry by making it easier and affordable Open Source fosters a learning community that can improve awareness and foster new development in RFID 6

7 Open Source Resources Sourceforge ( is one of the leading Open Source Communities Sourceforge is an Open Source Portal that hosts many of the top Open Source projects and over 110,000 projects in total User community of over 1,000,000 with lots of project management capabilities such as bug tracking, project ranking and code searching 7

8 Open Source Resources Interactive Session Using Sourceforge 8

9 Open Source RFID Projects Open Source is growing rapidly to cover the major areas required for building effective RFID systems. Open Source can allows users to start prototyping their applications and see the benefits in a short time Open Source offers a very complementary and very effective step-up approach to commercial vendors by allowing the easy build-up of knowledge and expertise with low cost Important Open Source RFID projects Rifidi A Business modeling and RFID development tool. Rifidi creates virtualized RFID environments for design, development and testing. TagCentric Open Source RFID Edgeware, allows controlling of RFID Devices and gathering RFID related data in a facility 9

10 Rifidi Software Defined RFID Rifidi is developed by a community led by Pramari with contributions from Universities and commercial RFID users It is a business process and development environment for building RFID systems Allows the creation of Virtual Readers and Virtual RFID environments that behave similar to real world hardware Can greatly reduce cost of entry and remove barriers to building prototype applications and proof of concepts Licensed under extremely flexible and open source approved LGPL license 10

11 Rifidi Software Defined RFID Interactive Session Rifidi Introduction 11

12 Tagcentric Open Source Edgeware Led by University of Arkansas RFID Software Lab Java based agent server that allows for connecting to multiple devices and collecting RFID and other sensor data Originated as a tool to aid RFID Research Lab and later open sourced under the extremely open NCSA License. Can be used to connect to multiple readers and collect RFID related data into a database for further programming 12

13 Tagcentric Open Source Edgeware Interactive Session TagCentric Introduction 13

14 Next Steps Get Involved Just download and start using the products Get involved in the community by giving feedback Any feedback is good feedback Chat with the Project Members about: New Features Bugs Product Ideas Qualities of Commercial products that are desired Or just plain old RFID tech talk 14

15 Getting some Help Sourceforge provides the following features to interact and get in touch with the Project designers and developers Mailing Lists Standard mailing list software that allows easy subscribe/unsubscribe Forums Standard forum environment This is the first line of communication for Open Source projects 15

16 Features and Bugs After some discussion or a post on the mailing list you can request a new feature or post a bug. Use the Sourceforge tracker tool to enter new bugs and feature requests 16

17 Features and Bugs Interactive Session Tracker Features and Bugs 17

18 Open Source RFID Community A community of Open Source, Universities and Commercial Vendors to build a full suite of RFID tools. An open place to share technology and ideas without any proprietary lock-in or vendor influences Website to be launched in Summer 07 featuring access to leading open source projects, research papers and case studies Community Roadmap with emphasis on compatibility and testing between products in the community 18

19 Open Source RFID Questions and Answers