Demo Kit

The Demo Kit laid out on a table: two black ActiveWave cases with antennas, a white motion detector, two power supplies, cables, a CD, and a row of tags, among them white and black card-shaped tags, two small white tags and two wristband tags.

The Demo Kit held everything needed to show the ActiveWave system's basic abilities. Its user's guide covered installing the software, setting up the hardware and running demonstrations of access control, tracking and inventory control.

The reader was the heart of the kit. It programmed the tags, listened to them and passed what it heard to the host computer, and it could call chosen tags itself. The field generator woke tags on a schedule, or whenever the motion detector saw movement.

The kit's software was the Programming Station, which set up the tags, and a demo version of the Tracker. The Tracker kept track of people, assets and stock, and showed every tag's activity as it happened. It could also drive the reader's relays. For example, it could let a laptop through the exit door only in business hours and only with its owner.

A software library let people write their own programs for the hardware. The basic demonstrations did not need it.

Its datasheet lists the computer the kit needed:

  • Microsoft Windows ME, 2000, or XP.
  • Pentium class processor or higher.
  • Minimum 120MB of available hard disk space.
  • Minimum 128MB RAM.
  • CD-ROM drive.
  • XGA or higher monitor (minimum 1024x768 pixels resolution).
  • An available RS-232 port (COM 1 or COM2 required)

The TigeRFID repository's notes say why two of the parts were in the kit. The field generator showed how to make zones within a reader's range. The motion detector showed how other makers' devices could join the system.

Specifications

The datasheets are historical documents. Their phone numbers, addresses and e-mail are no longer ActiveWave's.

Hardware 1 Standard Reader
1 Standard Field Generator
1 Motion Detector
3 cardTags, 2 compactTags, 2 jumboTags, 2 wristbandTags
2 power supplies (Reader and Field Generator)
1 RS-232 cable
1 Field Generator programming cable
Software 1 Programming Station software application
1 Tracker software application (demo version)
1 API software library & example application
Documentation 1 Demo Kit User’s Guide
1 Programming Station Software User’s Guide
1 Tracker Software User’s Guide
1 API Library User’s Manual
Quoted from page 1 of the Demo Kit datasheet (version 10).

These figures are the original units' claims, quoted as their source printed them. Where two ActiveWave datasheets disagree, this site quotes each and does not reconcile them. A rating or a test result belongs to the original units and does not carry over to a rebuild.

Nothing on this site says a rebuild may transmit on these frequencies as they are. Radio rules differ by country, and the TigeRFID project checks them before it chooses a rebuild's radios.

The datasheet

Demo Kit datasheet (version 10) (PDF). This page's description and the figures above come from its first page.

Files in the TigeRFID repository

These links open the repository as it stood at its activewave-2018 tag. Nobody has rebuilt the original hardware recently, so these files may not make a working unit as they stand.

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