Week 13

This week the week of submission of proposal report, progress report and the first three chapter of Final Year Project (FYP) Report.

But the good news is my supervisor is okay with us if we can submit all the report in week 14. So I have more time to update my proposal and blog.

The first three chapter of FYP Report that I mention earlier are consists of Chapter 1, 2 and 3 of Introduction of the project, literature review and the methodology respectively. I have completed my proposal and already submit it in this week.

My progress of this project will be updated until week 14 and it all can see in my blog page. I am still do some research of my project, the hardware and software that I will use and at the same time I am still looking forward for any upgrading and modifying this project especially for software. Since I am not expert in programming, so I did ask some of my friends that willing to teach me for the programming part.

Hardware Development

In this entry, I would like to show u some of the hardware that I will use.


1. RFID Tag

RFID tags, also known as transponders, contain a chip and an antenna. The latter enables the chip to respond to an interrogation signal transmitted from the RFID reader. RFID tags can be attached to or embedded in a physical object to be identified. They store product-item information such as manufacturer, product lot, size and category, production date, expiration date, final destination, etc. RFID tags have various characteristics such as designs, power source, carrier frequency, communication method, read range, data storage capacity, memory type, size, operational life, and cost. For instance, the tags could be (i) read only, write once/read many times or read/write capable, and (ii) active, passive or semi-active depending on how the operating power is driven. Passive tags do not contain a power source, whereas active tags have a tiny battery from which they draw their power, and thus have greater communication ranges, higher data transmission rates, larger data storage capacity, and higher price tags.

2. RFID Reader

RFID readers, also known as interrogators, are electronic devices that emit and receive radio signals through the antennas coupled to them. RFID readers capture data stored in RFID tags and, depending on the technology used, they may also overwrite data on the tags. Readers are responsible for the information flow between the tags and the host system via the RFID middleware. Furthermore, they are able to identify and read a large number of tags per second without any problem. As shown in figure 3, RFID readers come in variety of shapes and sizes and can be classified into the following three main types: fixed reader; hand-held reader; and mobile reader. While fixed readers are usually mounted to walls, dock doors or conveyor belts, mobile readers can be mounted on a forklift or similar equipment and hence increase the flexibility of use of the equipment at various locations in a warehouse.

  

3. PIC16F877A Microcontroller

This PIC is very popular due to low cost, wide availability, large user base and serial programming capability. the function of this PIC is that it will be program for this project and attach to the RFID Reader. 

4. LCD Display

The LCD displays the plan budget of the expenditure, price per quantity, and the corresponding balance of the plan budget. The message to be displayed is send to the LCD through data-bus. A set of control lines is needed for proper displaying of the characters in the LCD.  

These are some of the hardware that I will use in this project. It could be more hardware I will use during the process of this project.