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Portables Hardware Technology

RFID for Laptop Inventory Tracking? 47

Posted by Cliff from the knowing-where-your-hardware-is dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "We are in the process of getting new laptops and I was wondering if anyone has used RFID for inventory control of them? Like many places laptops have had a way of going MIA. In an ideal world I would like to be able to get a 'real time' update of where the tags are located. I also would like to know when a RFID tag goes by a fixed location such as a door. What are people's experience both good and bad with RFID? Is this realistic? Where do I start? Had this been done with open-source?"
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RFID for Laptop Inventory Tracking? More

RFID for Laptop Inventory Tracking?

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  • Why do you need the expense? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cliff just use barcodes and have people sign them in and out as they are taken.
    Why should you care where they are as long as you know who is currently responsible for it.
    • When you work in a building with 10,000 other people, stuff disappears. Happens ALL THE TIME and more-or-less impossible to track. If I had an RFID tag on my laptop and someone walks out with it, I could match the time the RFID went out the door with the time on the security camera covering said door...and bingo.
      • Try locking shit up. It works. Combine locking shit up with the aforementioned barcodes and it's foolproof. Instead of putting cameras on doors just put ONE CAMERA on the door that the laptops are locked behind. Goodness.
        • Laptops are locked up when they're in docking stations...at least they're suppose to be. (mine always is.) But we don't lock down regular boxes and the new Dell SFF desktops are small enough to stuff in back-pack so they tend to disappear.
          I've never heard of a company "checking out" laptops to employees. I'm the only one who's ever handled my laptop since I got it two years ago. We have to take them everywhere in case we get a support call.

          • What I can't get over is that there are enough criminals working for your organization that high cost items like that ...tend to disappear.

            I'm actually disgusted, to tell you the truth. Horrified even.

            Perhaps even hopelessly naive.


      • More importantly, you can also monitor the system for when a group of tags go through the door at the same time.

        My company is setting up a similar system. There are going to be readers at all of the external doors (which also have cameras) and then at a few main intersections in the building, only a few of which has cameras.

        Therefore, if a laptop disappears from Accounting, they can create a timeline for when it left the building. Then, once it's out, there are various things that can phone home. Of co
  • You need to look into active rfid's.

    • Re:Active RFID Tracking (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ELPAS (Visonic NA) is a company that makes that type of tag. Shameless plug, I install those systems.
      Basically, the tag transmits constantly and the readers are spaced throughout the facility (not just at portals), and give a message if the tag leaves an approved area, is tampered with, or is not seen by the system. The system can even lock down doors when a tag approaches the exit, and integrate to CCTV to capture a picture of the thief. Also does wonders when you have twenty people in a conference room wi
      • They approached Michael Dell about installing at the factory. He doesn't want them as 1000's of laptops are stolen every year, requiring replacements..... Hmm, Profit Motive?
        As I imagine the theifs aren't using them to give venture capital proposals, it also means thousands of stolen laptops that get sold at very low prices, taking away some potential Dell sales.
        • Dude, I hardly ever hear "I'd love to get a laptop" without being followed by "My buddy gets them for cheap". They're quite content in receiving X-random-laptop with X-lacking-features. Meanwhile, I blew a nice chunk on an Inspiron 8500 and even after a year I still love the damned thing and use it daily.

          Now don't get me wrong, I was once in the dark, having purchased (and quickly resold) a few questionably-obtained mobile computing apparati. I didn't resell for monetary gain, which didn't happen anyway
          • That may help for laptops for personal use, but you can often read in the newspaper about a social engineeri just walking into some business, and getting the receptionists to help him steal 20 laptops. And considering even though PHBs only use their laptops to check email, as a status symbol the PHB usually orders the most expensive laptop possible.
            My laptop anti-theft devices are
            a) I'm a poor college student and I dress like one
            b) I carry it around in a beaten up(on the outside) backpack, but one with
            • In a sense you're quite right. PHB's don't actively seek out and slaughter their notebook thiefs. My financial reasoning is quite different. Considering the market value for someone's head is around 500$ US (here at least - we're pooor), also considering I paid about 1500$ for my laptop, then anyone who deprives me of said laptop will be thrice beaten to death with an old Micropolis hard drive.

              But I do agree people don't seem to target Macs for some obscure reason. Perhaps out of ignorance (where's the

  • Random points (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:04AM (#9450846)
    1. RFID can be readily defeated (e.g. with tinfoil, or by placing laptop in metallic container), it should not be viewed as a security mechanism.

    2. The current model of IBM thinkpads have an integral RFID option (enabled via BIOS).

    • Re:Random points (Score:3, Interesting)

      by billcopc ( 196330 )
      RFID is easily foiled (*rimshot*) by any sufficiently massive _OR_ properly positioned hunk of metal. I played with the RF stickers at a video store that was once blessed with my dutiful presence, and soon discovered that they were rendered silent by merely holding an Xacto knife against the little bump in the center of the sticker. The knife would absorb the energy from the RF towers and thus the poor passive tag couldn't sing.

      Now it is safe to assume that most of my customers were too retarded to even
  • ...you can turn RFID on/off in the BIOS...

  • hmmm (Score:1)

    by rasz ( 788512 )
    IBMs do have RFID tags, but I have no idea how to use them :)
    I would go for WiFi localisation algorithms. I guess everybody will use WiFi in the company building anyway, and with this you will be able to determine exact position of every single person with laptop.
  • I'm currently involved in developing a wireless service tied to museums and libraries in Wales. The idea is that where people don't have their own kit, we'll have loan stock to avoid social exclusion. I don't think RFID is the complete answer to tracking the hardware (Laptops or PocketPCs) that'll be on loan, but it could be part of the system. Anyone with ideas about the ballpark figures involved in setting up something like this?
  • They won't go missing if you have a good system of knowing who has taken them out. People tend to steal less if they know they are the ones responsible for returning it. A signature on a sign out sheet goes a long way.
  • On a related note, is there an RFID tag / system that would be useful for finding my keys? Those Sharper Image things are so bulky.

    • Give them to someone smarter, that knows Sharper Image is full of lies.

      Me, it's quite easy. I have all of 2 keys I carry around: #1 is my car key, #2 is my house key. Since I can't leave the house without using my car, and since I have no reason to pull out my keys at work or any other non-house location, well I just never lose my keys :)
    • Just train yourself to put them down in the same spot every time you come home.

      When I come home, almost the first thing I do is go into my room, empty my pockets and put my keys, wallet, watch, and badge on a bookcase by the entrance of my room,

      Then I just know where they always are.

      Other solution is there are devices like the old whistle responder you can attach to your keys.

  • Active Systems (Score:4, Informative)

    by MarkedMan ( 523274 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:45AM (#9451807)
    If you are willing to spend a few dollars for each tag, and install a tracking system, then what you are talking about should work. There is a good AIM reference summarizing this: What Is RFID? [aimglobal.org] The advantage of an active system is distance, it can be meters away from a receiver. I remember talking to a friend working on this technology (14 years ago, sorry, I've lost touch and can't refer you). They were installing a system in a naval hospital to track the doctors by adding active tags to their base ID's, because the doctors were "too busy" to sign in and out at the guard desk. Sounds like what you want to do, substituting "laptops" for "doctors" . If you go to this site, select "Radio Frequency Identification" then "Systems" you will get a list of manufacturers: RFID Resources [aimglobal.org]

  • What happens when the laptop leaves the building (Score:3, Interesting)

    by raider_red ( 156642 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:14AM (#9452114) Journal
    Unless you're using a strong active RFID, you're only going to be able to track a laptop to the door of your place of business. If someone takes it home and "loses" it, there's no good way to keep tabs on it. It could be possible to scan it on the way out the door and take a picture of the person carrying it though, kind of like that store system which takes a picture of someone when they remove an item from the shelf.

  • Size Matters! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SuperChuck69 ( 702300 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:25AM (#9452260)
    I was looking at the similar problem of inventory tracking at my company. Every so often, the admin (conveniently my girlfriend) has to run around, tracking down who has what. We just just plain old inventory tags to keep track of things, but you have to get people to locate their items, locate the tags, transcribe them properly and not miss anything (dude, I didn't know THAT had a tag on it!).

    My solution was RFID. Then she could walk into an office, "hear" the items in the room, and go about her day. It sure beat any other system I could think of for tracking items (especially when techs, engineers, and managers trade items around the office without letting her know).

    The problem?
    Primarily size. RFID tags are not available in the "paper-thin" size you hear about on /. They are big and bulky and have a rather limited range (meaning inches, not feet). There was also a question of cost and how efficient it would be place a $1 RFID tag on everything from a server to a mouse.

    • Re:Size Matters! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Skater ( 41976 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @11:43AM (#9453047) Homepage Journal
      My workplace is doing inventory right now. The have bar codes on every monitor and CPU, but not keyboards, mice, or speakers. Laptops have a single barcode on the laptop itself, but none of the accessories.

      It seems to work pretty well. They come in with a handheld bar code scanner, scan the bar codes, key in the branch we're in, and move on to the next cube/office. If the range of those RFIDs is as short as you say, they offer no advantage over old-fashioned bar codes - you still have to get near the equipment to check it.

      --RJ
  • get a marauder's map for laptops.
  • What you are talking about are reasons why people are trying to promote RFID. However, in order to track "MIA" laptops you would need to allow big brother to track all RFID tags in productions. Thus, if you went to starbucks with a stolen laptop the RFID scanner would immediately recognize this and you would get arrested. On the other hand, if you didnt steal your laptop anyone can track where you are and where you have been.

    Good Plusses/Minuses.

    GroupShares.com [groupshares.com] - An Interactive Stock market community.
  • Here's what you do- set up your access points so that each one gets a separate set of DHCP addresses. Using SMS or the open-source equivalent, have the DHCP servers querry the laptops for asset tag numbers upon connection, and log both connection found and connection lost. Then all you need to do is query the SMS database for asset found and lost times to track a given laptop. This means when it does leave the premises, going off of the DHCP system, you've got the time recorded- which you can then compar
    • It's a thought, but whenever someone reboots, has their system go to sleep, or shuts it down, it's going to look like it's disappeared.

      You'd want to use a seperate tracking system than something that runs only when the system is operating.

      Oh, and I'd have personally recommended Bluetooth as opposed to some 802.11 implementation -- as you can get distance estimates between two nodes (I have no idea how accurate they are, though). And of course, it has the same problem with not being on when the computer's

  • Use Distributed.net! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why buy RFID tags? These 1. cost money 2. only work within a few feet. Instead install a Distributed.net client. They have caught thiefs [wired.com] before. Of course if the hard drive is wiped or replaced, it won't but how many lazy thiefs would do that?
  • It can work, but you're going to spend about $5000 per doorway for a powerful enough reader, nevermind the cost of the tags. A tag around 2x3" will perform best, but where do you want to put that in a laptop? I've worked with smaller tags, like 1.5x1.5 inches, but their range tends to be considerably less (60-70% of the larger tags).

    You'll probably be able to do something using those devices like they have in stores that set off alarms when someone leaves with something that hasn't been cleared. These,
  • although i've often thought that gps should be embedded into a few co-workers of mine that often go mia during the course of a day (likely to locate them in a near by tim hortons or starbucks)...

    i know too expensive, not practical in an office...
  • Since laptops tend to either be in someone's office, or being carried by the owner, I would think the same concerns about tracking an employee by RFID would apply here. By putting an RFID tage on the laptop, you track the employee as well as the equipment. I believe this unintended consequence should be a factor in the equation when considering this issue. Aside from the ethics of the issue, the company's policies with respect to employee tracking devices, if such policies exist, would certainly apply. Th
  • Implement wireless networking. put a wireless card in every laptop and secure it in a way that it can not be removed (use your imagination). Set up a server to handle tracking. Put code in every laptop that, once every n minutes, sends a packet to the aformentioned server.

    Track the laptops internally by observing which wireless transciever they're hitting. If you're good, you could triangulate the location...

    Put an RF monitor by the door; so, if one passes through, the monitor sends a packet to the

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