RFID readers

 

The RFID scanning hardware from OCR has been installed. You can see the scanners mounted here above the doorways. All boxes will be equipped with an RFID tag that will allow us to track and locate artifacts. The scanners will read when a box has entered a room within the facility or exited the building. All artifacts logged into the database will include the RFID number of the box the artifact is packed into.This will allow us to pinpoint where any given artifact is within the facility at any given time. If a researcher sitting at a computer in Ottawa is looking at a belt buckle in the artifact database, and they'd like to come to the facility and take a closer look at that belt buckle - this system assures that they will be able to find it when they get here. Given that there will be over 54,000 boxes of artifacts in the UWO facility when it is at full capacity, the ability to find one artifact in one box within the midst is a remarkable capability. McMaster will have a compatible system, so we will know if the box an artifact belongs to is located at our facility or at McMaster's.

Winter Wonderland

 

We've had the first significant snow fall of the season to start off our New Year. This is the view out towards the ravine from our Visualization Gallery. 

The new year has also started out in more than just a flurry of snow. We've already been busy with our furniture purchase. We should know how our facility will be networked to UWO this month, so that we can proceed with purchasing our computer/server/network equipment. The RFID hardware has been installed, and is in the process of being installed at the McMaster SA facility as well. The shelving has also started to go up at McMaster, and they are on track to start purchasing the bulk of their equipment by spring.