[Feature request]: API access for batch modifying location of asset

InternetOfTofu commented 2 months ago

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe?

Hi Shelf team,

I'm recently investigating how to manage small items at home/makerspace effectively, and found out there's a type of RFID scanning technology that allows using a handheld device to scan hundreds of RFID tags in front of the user simultaneously (ISO 18000-6C UHF RFID tags) in a few seconds. This technology allows me to know what's in a plastic storage bin without even opening it. I think it will be immensely helpful if I can incorporate it with an asset management system like shelf.nu and update location of items in batch via an API.

Describe the solution you'd like

Have a documented API that a handheld, internet-connected device can call to update location of traced assets in batch.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

carlosvirreira commented 2 months ago

Hi @InternetOfTofu thank you for your question.

Scanning a large amount of tags is always been an interesting thought for me.

What sort of user experience do you see in your head when thinking about the way that we could potentially show you the tags detected?

You 'wave the wand' - Shelf detects 100 codes. What do you see on your phone or desktop?

DonKoko commented 2 months ago

Hey @InternetOfTofu can you give us more information about this technology you are talking about? How does it work, I want to know more as it sounds interesting and could be indeed a great thing to integrate with shelf in one way or another. As for the API, its not something that is currently planned for the near future.

InternetOfTofu commented 2 months ago

I'm really happy that this sounds interesting to your team. I can provide more information on this.

For a demo on how this technology works, I would recommend watching this product video from AliExpress. I'm not affiliated with any merchant, I just found most product demos videos in this category are not as good as this one. The keyword for finding this category of products demoed in this video is "UHF RFID PDA". This showcase of UHF tag reading capability, especially at 1:03 in the video, demonstrate this technology's capability of scanning a bunch of cascaded tags without line-of-sight quickly.

So this can be used as a type of asset tag that allows for easy locating and in-bulk accounting. For more information on the rfid tags (and what can be stored in it), I recommend this article RFID Basics - EPC Gen2 Memory as a starting point to read.

Regarding what type of user experience I think will be beneficial:

Asset bulk accounting
- set a target location of the current scan (e.g. "room 1-shelf 1"), and scan the items on the shelf with a wave of hand, and all the items (asset tags) being scanned will have an updated location in the system
- (maybe this too? I'm not sure about this approach's reliability) An RFID asset tag is sticked to a plastic container indicating the identifier of the container, with a scan of the container without opening it, the app automatically update the location of all the items it found to be in the box
Asset finding
- When a user cannot find an asset at the location it's last seen in the system, the user can use a scanner to scan locations that the users think the asset might be located, and the device will notify the user when it detects such RFID asset tag.

On API: I did see your team's reply on another issue on there's no plan for providing an API in the short term. However, to allow users to start using this very useful feature in a streamlined manner, a documented API seem to be required in my view. If you search for "UHF RFID PDA" as I suggested above, you can find multiple vendors with non-standardized devices/SDKs. They are mainly using similar reader chips (Inpinj E710 / E510 / R2000) underneath, but have different OS layers. They can all read/write standardized EPC/ISO 18000-6C tags, but they provide different UI and programming interfaces to customers. Different warehouse companies might decide on purchasing this type of devices from different manufacturers and it is not possible to provide a single client application to universally run on them all. So the suggestion I have is to have EPC tag information as a possible form of asset tag in your system, and provide APIs for advanced customers to integrate their choice of scanner devices with the EPC tag support in your system.

Shelf-nu / shelf.nu