Using Laptop as a RFID Reader

[ericlwj]

Greetings to all,

I am a Computing Science Student and am currently undertaking a final year project. I have done some research on RFID and WAP, but were unable to find a clear answer to the differences between the Radio Wave of RFID standard and WIFI. I wanted to do a software system that uses WIFI standard available on most laptop to detect RIFD tags. Is it possible? Basically my idea is to tag items and use my laptop/desktop to locate them. The interface should include a screen that shows the position and range of the items relevant to the position of the reader, in this case my laptop.

Hope someone can help me. Greatly appreciated.
Regards
Eric

[jwenting]

not possible. As you'd have realised had you indeed done some minimal research into what RFID actually is and how it works.

Just because both technologies use radio doesn't mean they're identical.

[hotrodaxe]

not possible. As you'd have realised had you indeed done some minimal research into what RFID actually is and how it works.

Just because both technologies use radio doesn't mean they're identical.

maybe because you're comments are needlessly critical. helping each other works a lot better than stabbing, in the long run.

[jt_murphree]

maybe because you're comments are needlessly critical. helping each other works a lot better than stabbing, in the long run.

Yes We do try to help people but jwenting has a point. There are a lot of people that get on here wanting answers but are not willing to put work in them selves. Why should we help them if they are not willing to do the work. While jwentings words may have been harsh he has a legitimate point.

As for the question itself, jwenting is right, you can not read RFID with a standard wireless card on a lap top. For one wifi operates at 2.4GHz, which is not used for RFID. RFID actually has several different frequencies that can be used depending on the application but none of them will be on the wifi frequencies, I am pretty sure of that. Besides the frequency difference the technologies work differently so I don't think you could read the tags if you could get that frequency. In order to do this you would have to connect an RFID reader to the laptop.

[thoughtcoder]

Wow, the folks here really love replying to a dead thread.

Edit: me too.