NFC Scanner/Data Collecter & NFC Tags - How do I capture the tags data?

Question

I apologise if this question seems a bit vague but i will try explain what I require to the best of my ability. I'm looking for a solution that involves either BarCode or NFC Scanners. These Barcode/NFC scanners will be assigned to a person and they will then need to tap/scan other tags to tell me where they are or what they're doing.

Ideally I need the following scans to gather the correct information:

• A form of UserID (the colleagues I work with have access cards which have their NFC details on. There is no issue adding a barcode on the back of these that has the same detail)
• A location scan (these barcodes/NFC tags would be planted on walls around the place so we can identify where they are).

These would need time stamps against them.

An example would be:

Username: Bob Marley | Location: Café | TimeStamp: 24/05/2022 11:36:23

OR

• Username: Bob Marley | TimeStamp: 24/05/2022 11:36:23
• Location: Café | TimeStamp: 24/05/2022 11:36:35

Does anyone know of piece of hardware/software that would be able to work to collect this information? I really appreciate the support.

Thank you

Something like this would be ideal but with the capability of adding time stamps after each scan: Link

Answer 1

It sort of sounds like you are after a complete solution rather than to interface and collate the data into a specific format. I have used various barcode scanners and RFID readers and they generally have two types of interface with the computer.

The more common type of interface, at least for barcode scanners I have used would be for the data to be transferred as if it was being typed from a keyboard. This would require the software to look for keyboard input from the user. You could then validate the input and match a location and user scan and pass out the current date/time.

The second interface I regularly come across is a serial connection, either a physical COM port or a virtual USB-COM port. The RFID scanners I have used fall into this category. One advantage that I find here is that you can send a trigger command if you only want to scan after an external event has occured.

Doesn't really answer your question but maybe you can knock up some code to capture the two items of data and format them with the date stamp. Excel could be configured to accept keyboard entries and format them into cells.