User's Manual

Active RFID Tags: Features, Specifications, and Deployment Guidelines
15
R130 Dry Contact Tag and R131 IR-Enabled Dry Contact Tag
The R130 and R131 Dry Contact Tags are designed to be paired with a wide variety
of dry contact sensors to allow real time monitoring of the sensors' state. Typical
applications of the R130/R131 include but are not limited to use with fluid
detectors, IR motion detectors, alarm relay contacts, moisture sensors, and door
switches. When connected to a device with dry contact outputs, the tag will report
the current open or closed state of the dry contact device. The R131 has an on-
board IR sensor and is designed for tracking large, valuable assets that may
periodically move between locations (such as laboratory freezers, bio freezers, and refrigerators). Dry contact devices
have terminals that are either “closed” or “open” to indicate that a condition is normal. When something happens, such
as an interruption of power, the dry contact terminals indicate an abnormal state for the device. Until now, the standard
for monitoring this state change has been done with wired dry contact systems, with cables and wires linking the dry
contact monitoring system to a power source. Such wiring is not only expensive, it’s rigid and if the equipment is moved,
the cabling has to be redone.
Once connected to a dry contact device, the battery-powered R130/R131 will monitor and report the open and closed
state via RF transmissions. While in steady state, the tag will report the dry contact status once every 10 seconds. When
the dry contact state changes, the tag will immediately broadcast three beacons at 0.5 seconds apart with the new dry
contact status then return to beaconing the new condition once every 10 seconds.
R130/R131 Tags have a minimum switching time of 200ms for both open and closed state transitions. Meaning, the tags
are only intended to be used with devices that will be in the open or closed states for more than 2/10ths of a second. If
the dry contact device switches from one state and back faster than 200ms the tag will not report the state change.
IR-enabled tags are designed to be deployed in concert with RF Code’s IR Room Locators. These tags monitor their
environment for incoming IR signals and periodically report both their own unique ID and IR location codes. This provides
a method for rapidly locating mobile assets with room-level accuracy. Since location is determined via the IR room code,
there is no need for deploying multiple overlapping readers or performing signal strength calculations or triangulation.
The R130/R131 tag should be mounted on top of, or within a few feet of, the dry contact equipment. The R131 tag ships
with an integrated 8-foot 24 AWG stranded cable that can be cut to length. Tags can be mounted using either the
industrial-strength adhesive backing or by using the supplied plastic screw mount. The tag enclosures are impact resistant
and temperature stable. R130/R131 tag battery life is typically 5 years.