Prototyper User's Guide
From RifidiWiki
Contents
Rifidi Prototyper User's Guide
What is Prototyper
Prototyper is an RFID demo tool based on Rifidi Emulator. Emulated readers may be created and placed on a blueprint representation of a factory or warehouse, and various items can be created and dragged into and out of RFID "hotspots".
This will allow you to test workflows and business logic quite easily, without the need for expensive hardware setups. Any problem in the process can be identified and corrected sooner because of this.
Getting Started
Download Rifidi Prototyper at [sourceforge link coming soon].
Install it to your desired directory, and run the executable. You should see something like this:
Creating a project
Now we must create a project.
- Click on "File" and then "New Prototype".
- You can choose to do a custom project, or you can pick from a list of pre-configured projects. Either is fine for now, but if you want to use your own blueprint image file you will have to choose "custom project".
- After you have chosen, give your project a name and click "next".
- You must now select the parent folder for your project. Selecting the default "Prototyper Project" will be fine for now.
- Give your project a filename and press "Finish".
The Reader View
The top left portion of the screen should look very familiar to anyone who has used the Rifidi Emulator tool. Here, you will create emulated readers which can be used to create RFID hotspots on the blueprint.
To create a reader, click on the "+" icon at the top of the screen, and follow the Reader Creation Wizard. For more instructions on the Reader Creation Wizard, go here. If you don't know which reader to create, try creating an Alien ALR 9800 with the maximum number of antennas.
Once the reader has been created, click the "+" next to it. You can now see all the antennas that the reader has:
These antennas can be used to create hotspots. Try this now by clicking on an antenna and dragging it onto the blueprint. A "hotspot" icon should appear, which can be resized and re-positioned. Adjust the size of the hotspot to the scale you want, and drag it to the place you want it in the blueprint (say, monitoring a doorway or portal). You can create a hotspot for every antenna of every reader you create, and all can be adjusted in size and position.
Now that the hotspots are created, sized, and positioned, you need to turn on the reader, to make sure they are reading. Right click on the reader you created, and press "Start Reader". When you do this, the hotspots for that particular reader will change to show waves in front of them, as such:
This shows that they are on and ready to read any tags which enter their threshold.
