RFID Reader Detector and Tilt-Sensitive RFID Tag

Step 2 Building the RFID Antenna

This step describes how to build the antenna for the RFID tag.

Building the RFID tag antenna
To build the tag's antenna follow these three steps.
1. Cut the conductive copper tape into thin stripes of around 2mm (see Figure 1).
2. Tape these stripes (see Figure 2) in loops around one half of the cardboard (see Figure 3 for the layout of the antenna). The tag should have between 3-4 loops for the antenna.
3. Solder all the connections between the copper tape. Sometimes, this isn't necessary as the tape's adhesive backing is conductive, but solder the connections if you want to be on the safe side.

Now we have created our RFID tag antenna, and we will add the "RFID reader detection" functionality in the following step.

A little background
RFID readers transmit an electromagnetic (EM) field with their reader antenna. This EM field induces a current in the antenna for all RFID tags within reading distance. This induced current activates the RFID chip that is connected to the tag's antenna. This chip then modulates a response (usually the unique ID number) that is transmitted back to the reader. The antenna of an RFID tag is usually a thin copper wire that is arranged in loops. The loops allow the emitted EM field of the RFID reader to induce current to the antenna of the tag.

Comments

[ScottSEA]

You should change "stripes" to "strips"... otherwise, a very nice instructible.

[Electron229]

Who cares.