RFID technology helps parents find lost school uniforms

An Australian company recently launched a solution to help parents of school students track their uniforms, charging only $1.50 per uniform. The solution was to place a collection box with passive UHF RFID reading capabilities in the school's lost and found area, while attaching tags to school uniforms. Software on the server tracks the contents of the box every day and sends information to parents.

The collection box has a built-in Jadak ThingMagic module and 3G transmitter. Company co-founder Eugene Holdenson said the solution is very simple. Neither founder has any RFID technology background, and both were only 23 years old when the company was founded in 2015. Perhaps that's the beauty of the solution, he said, because the founders could solve a pain point with just a few modifications to the card reader and tags.

The idea came to Holdenson when he was doing some voluntary work in the lost and found office of a local elementary school when he was in college.

The company said lost items are a common occurrence in schools around the world. Students wear their coats to school and often forget to take them back when exercising on the playground. By the end of the school year, unclaimed items are often thrown away, creating waste.

To solve this problem, Holdenson considered printing QR codes on school uniforms and then scanning them. However, QR code scanning requires additional movements by school employees and is therefore inconvenient. Therefore, the company considered using UHF RFID technology, with a built-in reader and tagged garments, school employees would not need to do anything but put the garments into the box.

In late 2015, RagTagd developed the first prototype, and in April 2016 a more effective version was developed and tested at Roseville Public School in New South Wales. The company attaches tags to school uniforms, and parents pay an additional $1.50 for tagged items.

Using the RagTagd system, the company sews off-the-shelf UHF RFID tags with a unique ID number into clothing before selling them to parents.

Parents need to activate the tag when purchasing school uniforms. There is no need to download an additional app; parents simply send a six-character code printed on the tag to complete the pairing. The collection box is a plastic box with a built-in RFID Reader and antenna, which transmits data directly to RagTagd's servers.

Holdenson said that the system collects tag IDs every 24 hours, and this application scenario does not have high real-time requirements. The system reads the tags every midnight, and the software interprets the data. At 7:30 the next morning, text messages will be automatically sent to the mobile phones of parents related to these clothes. So far, the system has found the owners of 6,000 items.

After testing it in Roseville Public Schools, the company began reaching out to other schools, Holdenson said. 30% of contacts signed technical cooperation agreements. This month the company signed a deal with Spartan School Supplies, Australia's largest school uniform wholesaler, to sell uniforms with RFID tags.