Wireless Inventory Scan

Question

I'm working on a prototype of a box, let's say a cabinet, that needs to be aware of what's inside of it. Each item to be placed inside will have a unique identifier, possibly with a Bluetooth, RFID or NFC tag. The cabinet will be using the appropriate type of reader to read this and sending the data to a PHP script so that a computer can store it and remember what's inside the cabinet, or what was taken out. I'm not an expert with hardware and wireless identifying tags, so which technology would you recommend in this situation, a bluetooth tag, RFID, NFC, or something I haven't mentioned? Cost isn't much of an issue, this is purely a prototyped project.

Answer 1

I would say the technology depends strongly on the size of the box. If the box is just a few centimeters or inches I would say you can go with NFC resp. HF RFID. If the size is up to a few meters you can use UHF RFID. Everything above 10 meters may use bluetooth technology.
If you want to use HF RFID/NFC (e.g. mifare tags) you can easily start off with an arduino board (e.g. Arduino UNO) and the NFC shield or RFID controller shield with a larger antenna connected and a couple of RFID tags.
Usually, NFC reader can read standard ISO 14443 RFID tags (MIFARE), sometimes even ISO 15693-based tags.