Toplevel Technologies is very familiar with certain RFID software applications. We developed a 125Khz RFID tag reader board with a four-inch reading range. The board was specially designed in house for a miniature portable RFID handheld reader.

The embedded antenna and circuit board was designed using Eagle Software ( Easy Applicable Graphical Layout Editor ). The system reads 125Khz tags or cards, then reads from a real time clock to establish time and date. It writes the time and date stamp information to a serial I²C memory chip.

The core of the RFID application is the reader chip, which reads an analog radio frequency signal, and converts it into a digital output signal. We use a MicroChip PIC 16F877A to process the RFID digital signal, and communicate with the real time clock and the serial memory module.

The information collected by the reader is also sent to a PC serial port through a Max 232 serial IO chip. The output is formatted and accessible through a terminal application like HyperTerminal.

One of our specialties is to create user interfaces within a HyperTerminal environment. We create menus in code to display on HyperTerminal. The user chooses options like inputting configuration values to the microprocessor, displaying certain information in real time, or entering password information to access particular functions. This is a very basic and robust method to communicate with an embedded device. Almost every PC or laptop has HyperTerminal installed and there are few, if any, compatibility issues with various operating systems.

The advantage with our RFID system is that we can customize it for special applications. We do not manufacture in high-volume, as there are RFID solutions available for several applications and industry types.

Currently we own the reader circuit board designs and the embedded software package for this radio frequency identification product. We will initiate new production runs on a demand basis only. We are currently working on improved, portable power-supply features and the next revision is due out on Jan 2006.

Toplevel Technologies, Fort Collins, Colorado helps small to medium technology companies to be successful with various computing and remote data acquisition using RF, cellular and landline modems, GPS, in embedded software projects.