Motorola debuts new RFID reader

Long Island Business News, Jun 23, 2009 by Henry E Powderly II

Yesterday Motorola celebrated the anniversary of the barcode scanner. Today the Holtsville division of the company looks to its future.

Motorola's enterprise mobility business released its FX7400 series of radio-frequency identification readers today, a line that the company says is half the size of your average RFID reader, making it more practical for retail applications.

RFID tags are different than your average barcode in that they are read using radio waves, making them scannable from a further distance. An E-ZPass tag used in automobiles so drivers can pay tolls without having to come to a complete stop at tollbooths is one example of an RFID application.

The FX7400 reader can be installed anywhere in a retail location, managing inventory by counting the number of signals it receives from tagged merchandise.

It is expected to be available in the U.S. and Europe in the third quarter of 2009 and globally by the end of the year.

From the statement:

The FX7400 series supports deployments worldwide with one single configuration, making it easy for organizations to deploy and manage RFID solutions across multiple regions and locations. With the FX7400 fixed RFID reader, Motorola is introducing the industry's first plenum rated RFID reader, and includes Power over Ethernet (PoE) connectivity, which helps users reduce the cost of electrical drops and the need for external power supplies. The feature-rich FX7400 also includes a unique key hole bracketing design and mounting bracket for easy mounting onto counters, walls and ceilings. Customers can choose between models with two- and four- antenna port configurations, helping to reduce deployment complexity and meet a variety of application needs at an affordable cost.

Easy to install, configure and manage right out of the box, the FX7400 series is designed for integration with both Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and IBM WebSphere Premises Server 6.0 and 6.1. It also supports Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 for hosting customer applications directly on the reader. The FX7400 offers a variety of security features and leverages standardized auto discovery, firmware upgrade and monitoring protocols to quickly and easily manage readers across a network.