CYBRA Corporation

What do the NYC Marathon, AC power outlets, recyclables, and pet dogs have in common? RFID tags! Here's how they're helping spectators track their favorite runners, electric grids run smarter, recyclables get recycled, and your pooch, and only your pooch, get in and out of the house.

Earlier this month, the ING NYC Marathon employed UHF RFID tags to track 42,000 runners. Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal wrote in his blog that his cousin "Diane Bownes, ran this year's New York City Marathon on Nov. 1. I, meanwhile, sat at home and tracked her progress. Diane finished the first 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in 27 minutes and 12 seconds; reached the halfway point in one hour, 44 minutes and 48 seconds; and completed the race in three hours, 40 minutes and 16 seconds. I was able to track her progress because she was wearing an RFID tag on her sneaker, and interrogators were set up at milestones along the 26-mile route."

As Roberti points out, although RFID has been used for almost 10 years to track runners, this year, "for the first time, the New York City Marathon used an ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tag from a company known as ChronoTrack Systems. The advantage of ChronoTrack's system, according to Daniel R. Howell, the company's president, is that the UHF tag is single-use—that is, it can be thrown away after a race." Older HF technology systems required runners to lay out a $30 deposit for a hardened tag.

How are AC power outlets smarter? According to CleanTechnica.com, Zerofootprint an organization that helps corporations and governments evaluate and reduce their carbon emissions, has developed a TalkingPlug system through a joint venture with 2D2C, a manufacturer of electrical outlet systems. The TalkingPlug outlet, which plugs into a wall power outlet, contains two ISO 14443-compliant 13.56 MHz RFID Tags, and will have an initial price tag of about $50 (the price should go down considerably if it can make the product on a larger scale).

According to CleanTechnica's Zachary Shahan, In addition to the RFID chips, "it is equipped with components to make it a controllable node on a network, including microprocessor, and wireless networking.”

Shahan writes that TalkingPlugs can identify exactly how much electricity an individual appliance or electronic is using, but they can also be used to control electronics (i.e. program TVs to turn on and off at different times). Martin LaMonica of Cnet reports: “A set of plugs create a mesh network and can send information via a home or office building router to Zerofootprint. The company’s software processes and analyzes the data, showing people how the energy use compares to others.”

Unlike Google’s PowerMeter which too, can monitor home energy usage in great detail, but requires that an electrician install a smart meter or a home energy display, the TalkingPlug allows you to identify the individual appliances that are the most power hungry, one at a time, without retrofitting your house.

Another "green" application of RFID is being implemented by RecycleBank. According to Elaine Rundle of GovernmentTechnology.com , "to increase recycling in municipalities, sometimes it takes more than just encouraging citizens to be environmentally friendly. Incentive-based recycling may have a strange ring to it -- especially to the ears of city officials -- but that's what some cities are doing to discourage citizens from throwing away recyclables."

Adding an incentive to recycling was the idea Ron Gonen had in 2005 when he co-founded RecycleBank -- a program that tracks how many pounds a household recycles in order to offer incentives, like coupons and discounts at local businesses and restaurants, to residents.

RecycleBank installs LF RFID tags on recycling carts, which enable them to be scanned and linked to the coordinating address. Participating cities' recycling pickup trucks are retrofitted with a mechanical arm that includes a scale and RFID scanner. "It picks up the cart, reads the chip, identifies how much your home recycled, and that's translated into RecycleBank Points," Gonen said. "They can log on to our Web site and it's just like looking at your bank statement: It tells you how much they recycled each week and how many RecycleBank Points they earned."

Gonen said more than 75 cities participate in the program and service was recently launched in the United Kingdom. The results are impressive. Earlier this summer Westland, Mich. saw a jump from 90 tons of recycling/month to 550 tons/month. North Miami went from a mere 30 tons/month to 170 tons/month.

And finally, Fido gets into the act, too. According to the LA Times Unleashed blog, "Doggy doors are a convenient solution for pet owners who are away for hours at a time or are too lazy to tend to their animals when they need to go outside. But, the problem with cutting a hole in your door and covering it with a rubber flap is that any petite burglar or curious animal could crawl their way into your home.

The Plexidor Pet Door is an interesting alternative. After installing the mini door, only pets with the compatible RFID chips attached to their collars can enter. The door opens when it detects a nearby chip, which the company assures is waterproof and shockproof.

What all these products and solutions have in common is they are closed loop solutions. Designed to do one thing really, really well -- track marathon runners, sense electrical load, identify participants in a recycling program, or open a doggie door just for the animal that lives in that house -- closed loop RFID solutions are fairly straigthforward to design, debug, pilot, and go live with an ultra-fast ROI.