● CASE STUDY · IDENTIUM TECH SOLUTIONS
Active RFID + BLE Tracking
Real-time location, fusing long-range RFID and BLE.
OVERVIEW
This platform tracks where things are, live. Battery-powered 2.4 GHz active RFID tags (Marktrace MR79xx) and BLE 5.0 beacons report presence across zones, gateways forward events, and a web app shows a live radar, indoor floor maps and geo-fence alerts.
THE CHALLENGE
Passive RFID sees a tag only at a chokepoint; active tracking must fuse continuous, noisy beacon signals from multiple gateways into a stable, trustworthy zone map. Worse, the MR79xx only streams continuously in an 'open tag output' mode that can only be enabled over an authenticated BLE GATT characteristic, not over the data path the server ingests from.
WHAT I BUILT
- 01
A custom binary TCP protocol parser: 0x55AA start flag, CRC16-CCITT validation, command codes and a TLV body parser, plus a separate capture-only diagnostics port with annotated hex dumps and packet diffing.
- 02
Solved the streaming-mode problem with an Electron companion using Web Bluetooth to hold the reader's continuous mode asserted over GATT (password-authed), reassemble frames, and re-inject them into the server's ingest pipeline.
- 03
Signal smoothing that pins a tag to its strongest-average antenna over a rolling window, turning flickering RSSI into confident 'entered / left zone' events.
- 04
A BLE parser handling iBeacon, Eddystone and Holyiot sensor extensions, feeding a live radar and floor-map UI.
OUTCOME
Continuous visibility over high-value assets. It's the difference between knowing something left and knowing exactly where it is right now.
GALLERY
