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Part One: An RFID-driven welcome application
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We installed 1 RFID Alien reader, at the entrance, on a walk-through arch. The arch reader’s signal was boosted by 4 antennas which are the white blocks.

We distributed simple conference name tag holders fitted with a thin passive RFID tag. These were connected to guests contact details - name, company, email address, LinkedIn. Beyond the arch we projected each name and company related to name card/tag detected. It would pick you up from about 3 meters from the screen. We calibrated it to pop your name a little before reaching the arch.

We also projected the same inside the exhibition space (as another projector was available), while on side monitors we showed a variation of the welcome screen with “person x, company x, has just entered this space”. These were turned off early due to mix-ups as there was a lot going on.

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Part deux: 2 physical “swap contact details” touchscreen consoles
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We placed the other two readers inside vertical touch screen units.

Your badge triggers your name to appear on the screen in a circle. The signal reached 2 meters. People in front of the unit blocked this reach signal working as a perfect damper to return only those in front of the screen to show up. Test, test. This is not really the best sequence series. Video would be great showing people interacting (coming soon).

As all participants had already given us their contact details before entering, we could easily hook people together. See the steps below. Pressing the central button sent emails to respective swappers. It worked! And of course there are a million add-ons that might be possible now, but heck this is just a prototype.

This project helped kick-start development of some new goodies for the Roomware Server. Due to the miserable software support we received from the RFID hardware suppliers, we were forced to write drivers for the RFID reader to communicate with the Roomware Server. So now the Alien reader is supported. What is the state of middleware for RFID? Anything else open source with lots of support for different readers? I assume that as we can read an Alien RFID reader that we are now supporting all Gen 2 UHF readers as that’s an RFID standard.

So this concludes this small case study on a social use of RFID in an exhibition/conference environment.

Oh and they went crazy with segways and smoke machines plus all those LEDs.

And a bit of a tour of the location via dutchcowboys, a dutch marketing and tech blog.

Thanks go to Tom for saving the day (once again!), as 4 people in the team were seriously ill during the crunch period(me included!), so not enough time to test and integrate. Also a big shout out to our collaborators and new special “Internet of Things” operations hit team, Tim and Maarten. All ran smoothly from about 6.30pm onwards. The guests responded very positively!!

My only dark moment was reflecting on the possible extinction of the business card and what that might mean for graphic design on small pieces of card. I was also slightly surprised by how some people used the application. I noticed people in their haste to show it off, clicking on 3 or 4 people they had just met and not really spoken to, pressing the connect button before receiving consent. It was game-like, youthful enthusiasm on show. Treating it as a game when you just meet people was probably due to the nature of the event, which was to show of cool technology. Some people might see this as “connection-lite”, or a new form of spam in which you see your spammer. Shy people will get their email address sent to a stranger who they did not really want to be associated with. Let’s implement that on/off button for RFID tags for people soon.

Team:
Project Management + RFID : Tim and Maarten of Innoviting
Registration web application: Rob van der Burgt - Asva
Roomware Server, database: Tom Burger of Mimic Media, Roomware Project
UI development: Mark Barcinski and Adrien JeanJean of BarcinskiJeanJean
Concept development and creative direction: James Burke of Alchemyst and Roomware Project

Demo08 profiled a new Alcatel/Lucent supported start-up tikitag. The company sells kits much like the people at Phidgets which connect RFID tags to your computer via a USB connection. Tikitag’s take on this is to enable developers to build new social RFID services. It also is place for people with ideas to connect with developers. Check the video of their founder giving his demo pitch.

***UPDATE: There’s been a change of address. Look below for new location****

It’s that time again. That time to get your geek on and come mess around with technology and human behavior. Got any ideas for new room-based installations, new service ideas that have a multi-touch component? RFID will be a great addition to the table for new interactions like adding contacts.

Where: CanTouch.
When: Saturday, 2nd August, 2008 from 10am - 6pm

Bring your: RFID tags/readerz, Wii-mote, multi-touch “Minority Report” interfaces, empty skullz, and join your fellow reactable heads, hardware hackers, software developers, nerds, video researchers, interaction designers.

Sign up here
or send us an email to let us know y’r coming [info-at-roomwareproject.org].

This workshop is an initiative of Peter Kaptein.

Where:
Creative Crowds
Mauritskade 17
1091GC Amsterdam

Some links to inspire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU&feature=user
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AMv5mz6STo

Netniet.org wanted to explore what happens with rating people in a physical space. Inspired by reading, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”, they reused the whuffie, a social currency in Cory Doctorow’s book which people use to rate each other and pass each other value which they use to live off.

“Are we heading towards a future in which social networks will also dominate real life? At the Impakt Festival, this future became reality. With your mobile phone you could judge the performances and especially the people around you, for instance, on whether they are drug free or dangerous. The way in which you are judged by people might also determines your experience of the festival: your popularity becomes tangible. Do you get an extra cookie to go with your tea?”

The installation was spread across 4 different spaces and two separate buildings. Each space had a screen that visualized ratings and zone presence of people participating. 5 days, 5 questions or ways to rate each other. People wore badges with unique ids and a mobile application was used to rate people. Ratings also showed correlations between people as they rated each other.
Example: “Is this person drug free?” Correlation: both have a low rating, means people think they use a lot of drugs. We would then present a random meaning inside the rating-triggered visualization, for instance, ” person 1 is likely to meet person 2 in a cloud of smoke somewhere”.

Check out a video fragment of the Gifted project up and running.

For the Roomware Project, the big benefit is that any of you can now build applications that can take advantage of our new zoning ability. It’s easy to download and there’s documentation too. It was certainly the most complex installation so far. A mobile client handled the ratings using mobile internet. RW Server handled the bluetooth device tracking. That the mobile client handled the rating was a blessing in disguise. We were trying to handle all rating via bluetooth. Fortunately this failed (java does not support writing bluetooth friendly name). If it had, it would have meant a long wait for the plodding speed of bluetooth readers to pass the detection of a rating along. Mobile internet did it within 4 seconds. From a user experience perspective this was just fine;)

See further post on Barcinsky + Jean Jean’s blog

Project Team

Alchemyst - zoning, bluetooth detection

Barcinsky and Jean Jean - data visualization

Nietniet.org - concept, voting application

Lava - graphic design

Nulaz - mobile client for voting

Impakt festival - Festival organization

“This is a modified version of our interactive installation featured at FITC Amsterdam. The actual bluetooth presence service has been replaced by a scripted simulator which randomly adds and removes people from the installation. Enter your name in the popup field in the bottom and you will be playing an instrument too!”

via Barcinski and JeanJean

via fresh creation

The interesting new feature is that the networks parameter is simply a set of key-value pairs, and you can use anything as the key. So instead ofmac_address, for example, you could pass a GSM Cell ID, or a Bluetooth Device Address.….  

Once I’ve done that — gluing the Bluetooth Device Address, using the key bd_addr to the Plaze — I can now build a mobile application that scans for Bluetooth addresses and queries Plazes 

 

This is where it gets more interesting as far as Roomware is concerned, their method of using these keys as identifiers for presence could serve as an interesting use case for our own implementation of this sort of location ‘mapping’. One simple Roomware example we often talk about is using a batch of Roomware servers to act as Zones for a location for instance. Whenever someone is near one of the Roomware servers they are detected and can be placed on a map which can then be used by other applications to make a friend locater at large events or a historical timeline of visitor activity.  It’s nice to see some more working implementations in this field and maybe even the start of some standards for working with presence and network identifiers.