Wal-Mart to begin RFID tagging

[sunshine05]

Another reason to stay away from Walmart..



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeiPvySiOOs&feature=share

And I found this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421304575383213061198090.html

[Twisted Titan]

Who care about clothes??

Its not like if you are hungry and wanted to order a pizza.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZuHWczcDg

[big country]

Walmart still does make me use a "loyalty" card to get normal price on overpriced groceries. As far as I'm concerned I buy all my groceries there (especially when I'm stocking cans of soup, fruit, etc) just because they don't track my purchases with a stupid card.

[Glass]

RFID tracking is big down here in Oz. Carton packaging has it obviously for supply chain but individual items are also loaded with RFID now. Usually stuck under the product label. They are so thin you can't tell they are they most times. Clothing is another one. I have cut several out of clothes. They are usually sown into a second tag near at the back of the collar. I don't know if the clothing ones remain active considering they are going to get washed. I'm still not sure they are for anything more than article tracking in store. Some of them have been very small and others are quite big that they stick in you so you know they are there.

They do need to be a minimum size so the antennas can get some level of wavelength matching.

I've heard they are going to build them into threads woven into clothing. Once they get the mesh networking stuff worked out I expect it will become easier to work out what you have. I can see the mesh networks scanning your wardrobe and making an inventory of the items you have then reporting that back when passing the next receiving station and providing an inventory.

I have mentioned this before. In Australia they are building a 4watt RFID transmission and receiving network on the cell phone towers. These will have the capability of transmitting several kilometres and I think cell phone spacing is about 3.5km diametre so I can see they will be able to create this mesh network once it is setup. They will be able to trigger passive ID's and receive the data coming back. This is going to use the 900Mhz band which is our old analogue cell phone network frequency. That makes the wavelength about 33cms or say about 1 foot.