Printable mini-display tech draws power from NFC devices Cambridge-based PragmatIC has produced an NFC-enabled label with a built-in screen picking up power from the device reading the tag, surely worth £600,000 of anyone's money. The technology involves printing a tag with an embedded Near Field Communications transponder, but one that also incorporates a small screen powered by …
Hi, great article (as usual), just one remark: last week I spoke to a dutch company that holds patents on NFC technology with encrypted unique id. Today banks (my line of work) are only concerned about getting connected to the general Public. But the big breaktrhough will be when Manufacturers start adopting NFC. Anticounterfeiting is just one example...
If the display had been a kind of e-ink, so that it was always visible and you changed it in that brief moment of power, then i could see that being very useful.
e.g. you could change the price labels on items without needing to print a new label, just wave your rfid programmer over them (with suitable auth to stop cheeky bargain hunters doing it themselves)
That would allow the display to be permanent, with no fading. The NFC kick would only be required to update it.
Ideal for price labels on store shelves, and even on the packaging of the products themselves. Instead of having to reprint umpteen labels whenever there's a sale on, you just wave your magic NFC wand over the products to update their tags.
This current tech. is pretty good too, but it seems rather limited in its potential applications.
At least if the picture's changeable, you could use it to selectively reveal information tailored to the purpose. Like, "older than 18" in order to enter a club, instead of the full birth date. No names either, but a good-enough quality picture would be useful.
If the display can show the price and supplier of what you've just bought and a one line description then you will be able to know what you are signing for using this tech much better than using a current chip and pin card. Also if generic NFC writers which interact with these devices can be made cheap enough, you'll be able to use these tags to make secure Internet payments through an untrusted computer or mobile phone before long, and the bank need not worry that much if your computer or phone is running malware, any more than they need to trust the whole net connection between your computer and theirs. To do that these passive tags will need to be combined with input controls which collect "something you know" as well as being "something you have", but getting rid of the need for contacts and batteries raises this game somewhat.
I agree, that e-ink would be a much more useful application here, but, consider the size of the screen. Would you be able to get an e-ink screen that small / thin?
Also, although the e-ink would only need power to change the display, how much power would be needed to make that update?
Also (also) you would also need the tech attached to process and update the display.
The display mentioned in the article is (in my mind) like a heat activated transfer (like the ones they used to have on transformers, told you which side your robot was on), the image is (always) there, but is only visible when the power (heat) is applied to it. Changing that to an 'intelligent' display, like update-able e-ink is not likely to be a small task.
People have been touting "auto update" price labels in supermakrets for *decades*. It's potential is *huge* as think about all the lines * no of updates * no of stores * staff time saved.
But it's very difficult to bring all the pieces together. AFAIK people who've tried planned to used "smart ballasts" to vary the flicker rate of the fluorescent lights (no it should not be detected by humans).
If this tech can be used with RFID how about a label in your passport (or other RFID enabled bit item that society wants you to carry around) showing when someone last tried to read it?
BTW AFAIK *all* the e-ink displays are either made *specifically* for the product they're fitted in or somewhat bulky rigid plate designs.
I'd *love* an ebook reader I could at least roll up when going somewhere.
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