Alien Beginners Guide

Logging in

To log in to an Alien ALR 9800, get to a command prompt, and type in the following:

Telnet <Reader_IP> <Reader_port>

This will bring you to a login prompt. Default username/password is "alien/password".

Commands

This will bring you to your first command prompt. This is where you will type in commands for the Alien. To read tags visible on any of the antennas, type in "t" and press enter.

For the rest of the commands, they generally operate in a get/set way, just like a getter method or setter method in some Java code. To get a variable, such as TagType, you would say "get TagType". To set that variable, you would say "set TagType=X", where X is the value you want to set TagType to.

TagType

The TagType command is used to adjust which types of tags the reader searches for. It is represented by an integer between 1 and 31, with the binary representation of that number being the tags you will read. The chart for these commands looks like this:

1. Gen1 "Quark"
2. Gen1 "Omega"
3. Gen1 "Lepton"
4. Gen0
5. Gen2

This sounds complicated, but in reality it is very simple. For example, if you want to read Gen1 tags, you just type in

set TagType = 7

because that would mean that bits 1, 2, and 3 are all 1 (Its best to ignore the different types of gen1 tag and simply treat them all as a unit). If you wanted to read gen2 tags, you would type in

set TagType=16

because this would mean that the 5th bit was 1, and everything else is 0. If you want to read all tag types, type in

set TagType=31

AntennaSequence

Antennasequence controls which antennas you read from when you get a tag list, and in what order. For instance, if you type in

set AntennaSequence=0,1,2

you would read off of antenna 0, then antenna 1, then antenna 2. You can also get fancier, such as this:

set AntennaSequence=0,1,2,1,2,0

This would read off of 0, then 1, then 2, then 1 again, etc.

PersistTime

This command controls how long you want to keep a tag around in the Alien's memory before it is discarded. It is measured in seconds, so this command:

set PersistTime=30

will keep the tag around in memory for 30 seconds after the reader has lost contact with it. The special case of

set PersistTime=-1

will keep the tags around in memory indefinitely until they are read.

TagListFormat

This command controls how tags look when they come back to you. There are 4 formats, Text, Terse, XML, and Custom. To look at custom formatting, look up "TagListCustomFormat" in the Alien's PDF file. This is what the other formats look like:

Text

Tag:3008 33B2 DDD9 0140 3505 0000, Disc:2008/12/12 12:38:49, Last:2008/12/12 12:38:49, Count:1, Ant:0, Proto:2
Tag:3000 2141 60C0 0400 000A 4A27, Disc:2008/12/12 12:38:49, Last:2008/12/12 12:38:49, Count:1, Ant:0, Proto:2

Terse

3008 33B2 DDD9 0140 3505 0000,0,1
3000 2141 60C0 0400 000A 4A27,0,1

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Alien-RFID-Tag-List>
<Alien-RFID-Tag>
  <TagID>3008 33B2 DDD9 0140 3505 0000</TagID>
  <DiscoveryTime>2008/12/12 12:39:46</DiscoveryTime>
  <LastSeenTime>2008/12/12 12:39:46</LastSeenTime>
  <Antenna>0</Antenna>
  <ReadCount>1</ReadCount>
  <Protocol>2</Protocol>
</Alien-RFID-Tag>
<Alien-RFID-Tag>
  <TagID>3000 2141 60C0 0400 000A 4A27</TagID>
  <DiscoveryTime>2008/12/12 12:39:46</DiscoveryTime>
  <LastSeenTime>2008/12/12 12:39:46</LastSeenTime>
  <Antenna>0</Antenna>
  <ReadCount>1</ReadCount>
  <Protocol>2</Protocol>
</Alien-RFID-Tag>
</Alien-RFID-Tag-List>