Zebra RFD8500 RFID Scans

[Paul Burrows]

Hi

I am using the above handheld scanner with Webscorer on 2 iPhones.  For the last couple of years I have used two of these scanners at the finish line and yesterday whilst timing a 5km race the scanners seemed to go wrong. It was like one of the scanners interfered with the scans on the other and they stopped recording the scans almost like we were standing too close together or something?

I would be interested to hear if anyone is using this setup and whether they have encountered something similar or whether there are any measures that can be taken in setup to avoid this

[Vesa Suomalainen]

Antennas from two separate readers can interfere with one another if too close. This won’t happen with multiple antennas attached to the same reader as only one antenna is turned on at a time - the reader will switch power to the antennas a fraction of a second at a time. With two handheld readers, the built-in single antenna in each is turned on at the same time, and the interference can cause missed chip detections.

[Paul Burrows]

Ah I see! Thanks for clearing that one up. So I guess it's either make sure the scanners are quite far apart or just use one? 

[Vesa Suomalainen]

With handheld RFID readers, since the antenna can end up pointing in all directions, it’s best to use just one to avoid the potential interference.