ThingMagics New RFID ReaderA Step Toward the Internet of Things

Tag : electronic cable assembly

DSM Engineering Plastics has added rnitel C, for wire and cable coating applications in the automotive industry, to its range of copolyester TPEs.

The company claims improved high-heat aging performance, halogen-free flame retardance and hydrolysis resistance compared with other copolyester elastomers.

Arnitel is also said to offers high abrasion resistance, allowing designers to reduce the weight and mass of wiring and cable through using ultra-thin-wall coatings.

The TPE also is said to beis suitable for other extrusion applications including cable harness components, convoluted tubes and hoses. ThingMagic may sound like an oddly whimsical name for a company that makessome of the key hardware and software behind radio frequencyidentification (RFID) systems—machines that have seriousreal-world jobs like tracking the hundreds of thousands of productsthat pass through the dock doors of Wal-Mart warehouses and otherdistribution centers every day.

But if you spend any time talkingto the principals at the company, most of whom came out of NeilGershenfeld’s physics and media group at the MIT Media Labalmost nine years ago, you’ll realize that for them, RFIDtechnology is just a means to something bigger: an “Internetof things” where every common object or device is tagged withan electronic identifier and can wirelessly interrogate every otherobject, creating a real-time picture of everything passing througha given space.