As @jgaehring said, Web NFC would be ideal, but unfortunately it just isn’t quite there. I couldn’t get any of this to work a year ago.
BUT… things have come a long way! WebNFC is now supported in Chrome v89. I was able to run this demo app on my phone using the Chrome Beta browser (the normal Chrome app was v88). I can read & write records to this NFC tag: Buy NFC Key Fob - NTAG213 - Grey Online | GoToTags Store
Web NFC does have major limitations but this is really exciting! If you check the source of that app this is really quite simple… I don’t see why this wouldn’t work in a FK field module. We should test it out.
I’m excited that ID tags are becoming more of a core concept in farmOS 2.x. It would be cool if Field Kit had a UI for searching assets by their tag. One example might be as simple via keyboard, reading an animals ear tag. But if the system became pluggable… perhaps a QR code and NFC Field Module could provide options on the same ID tag search page.
Also great input @Symbioquine, @jgaehring… QR codes certainly have their own advantages (really love the meshtag concept btw)!
Very interesting!! Your post came up as I was replying - need to grok more on this but I’m intrigued
At least for my use-case pretty much everything falls into that later category; lots of assets that need individual tracking and are very close together. Some examples;
~80 rabbits in rows of cages
50’ beds with between 10 and 60 trial plantings in them
~2.5K seed packets/containers in boxes/tubs
For these things QR codes are a very natural fit and provide essential redundancy to any other labeling system when used to label the less ephemeral outer layer. e.g. the cage, bed, box/tub.
The sort of UX you’re talking about takes over from there to help select/filter within the cage/bed/box.
For example, the rabbit cages have a printed label something like this;
We often insert a hand-written label in front/bottom with the rabbit(s) names which can be moved between cages if the rabbit is moved.
I’d be very interested in an OCR based strategy too as long as it baked in some sort of error correction, otherwise that “3” can become an “8” or “2” for the computer as easily as for the human reader.
Ah! Yea, QR codes totally make sense in that scenario!
I assume the QR codes would be sheltered, too, so not quite as vulnerable to the elements. I think of animals in general as a better use case for tags than vegetables, since they’re more likely to move and to last longer. I’m normally thinking of larger, grazing animals, but I guess rabbits have independent reasons which make just as much sense.
Anyways, didn’t mean to pooh-pooh the idea entirely, and I’m all for supporting them in Field Kit, especially since it’s practically a solved problem once you pull in the right library for it. I’m just super cautious whenever they’re suggested, as a general rule, because I think they can introduce a lot of unnecessary complexity.
And yea, I think there’s a LOT of potential in OCR! It’s something I haven’t looked into for a long time, so I’m sure it’s a totally new landscape now. If it’s possible to provide such systems with a restricted vocabulary, I’m sure it would help reduce such errors. I guess it wouldn’t work as well if all your names were “rabbit cage #1”, “rabbit cage #2”, etc, but maybe you’ll just have to switch over to naming your cages after Harry Potter houses or something.
