A shortage of RFID skills within companies has long been cited as an obstacle to using the technology. IBM hopes its slew of free tools will help change that.
Armonk, New York-based IBM has released a toolkit that includes a graphical tool that allows developers to simulate how an actual RFID system would help their business. Also, an educational tool that includes resources to understand how RFID technologies work, how to develop RFID applications, and best practices.
Also part of the kit is a tool to create applications that interact and respond to events within an RFID system.
The so-called RFID Integrated Solution Enablement, or RISE, toolkit is available on IBM’s alphaWorks website.
Additionally, IBM is giving away two development kits to help train staff, which also can be found on alphaWorks.
Firstly, IBM’s RFID Device Development Kit that helps developers and students build applications that run in a real world RFID environment. The toolkit builds on a repository of more than 300 RFID-specific resources, including technical articles and tutorials and information.
Second is the Application Level Events, or ALE, Preview for RFID that enables developers to create applications that read events from RFID devices and display the event notices on a web browser. This allows devs to build RFID capabilities into applications at an earlier stage.
