Start Reading RFID Tags in Less Than 60 Seconds

Suzanne Smiley | Apr 27, 2021 | min read

Introduction

Welcome to RFID Insider! In this video we will show you how fast and easy it is to start reading RFID tags. The goal of this video is to show that reading RFID tags is not as complex or intimidating as some people might think, and, to do so, we will be counting the number of seconds it takes from plugging in our RFID reader, to effectively reading RFID tags.

One thing worth mentioning is that I already have the ThingMagic URA software downloaded on my PC – which only took a few minutes. If you want to download the software now, click the link in the top right corner.

RFID Setup

Here is my current setup:

My computer with the preloaded ThingMagic URA Software
My ThingMagic USB Pro RFID Reader
A Sample Pack of UHF RFID tags
And a timer so we can keep track of our time

Connecting & Reading

All right here we go – ill start our timer now.

First let’s launch the ThingMagic URA Software.
Once you see the URA Connection Wizard – lets go ahead and plug in our ThingMagic USB RFID Reader. As you can see once its plugged it, our power light turns on.
Now click refresh on the Connection Wizard. Your Reader’s Connection port information should populate. Click next.
The software then establishes a connection with your USB reader.
On the next screen, select your reader settings - click the drop down and I click on “NA” for North America – then click Next.
The next screen simply verifies your information, go ahead and click “Connect and Read”

The software processes that information and when the application opens – you can see our RFID reader is already reading our RFID tags.

This process only took us – 44 seconds according to our timer.

I can skip ahead to the one minute mark, and you can see at one minutes – you can see our reader has already read our sample tags about 400 times each.

Not all reader setups are this simple, but desktop or USB readers are made to be quick and easy-to-use. These qualities make desktop readers ideal for RFID testing, or any RFID application that needs to read or write one RFID tag at a time – for example, checking in and out library books or creating new files for a file tracking application.

So there you have it - How to get started reading RFID tags in less than 60 seconds.

Conclusion

If you have questions about this video or the equipment used - click here to contact us or chat with us in the chat box in the bottom right of your screen. For more information on RFID in general - comment below!

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