The reader is rarely the question. The number of points is.
A fixed reader sits in a cabinet and does its work. What decides the choice is how many antennas it has to drive, where it hangs and whether it can decide for itself when reading happens. Start with the question you want answered, not with the number of ports.
What to look at when you choose
Four things that decide the choice, in order of weight.
- Number of antennas
- One reading point often needs two to four, and that adds up fast
- Where it hangs
- In a clean cabinet or in a dusty hall: that decides the housing
- When it reads
- Continuously, on a time window, or only once a sensor sees something
- How it connects
- To your network, and whether it can keep working if that drops out
What a fixed reader does and what it does not do
Wel
- Drive several antennas from one point
- Read continuously without anyone operating anything
- Decide for itself when reading happens, on a trigger or a window
- Run for years in the same spot
Niet
- Come along to the place where the work is
- Do anything without antennas: they define the read field
- Make up for a badly chosen placement
- Install itself: a reading point is process design
With fixed readers the money rarely goes to the reader itself. It goes to antennas, cabling, mounting and working out where the reading point should be. So do not budget the price of the cabinet but the price of a working reading point.