i4 Reader - Getting Started

This article describes the initial setup process and how you can connect to your i4 Reader. For this purpose, the device has a built-in web-interface that can be enabled for a duration of 15 minutes.

To get more information about the i4 Reader, see the i4 Reader Product Overview article.

Connect and Configure

1. Connect the desired amount of antennas to your i4 Reader. See "i4 Reader Product Overview" for more information.
2. Follow the instructions in the following article to enable the web-interface: "How to enable and use the i4 Reader web interface".

Note: When the i4 Reader is connected to a network that has internet access, it will try to update its firmware which will make the device reboot once or twice. This does not happen when this feature is disabled. (See: How to enable or disable automatic firmware updates for the i4 Reader)

When the web interface is enabled, it may look like the image below:

Using this web interface the various settings of the connected i4 Reader can be changed.

Check the RFID Antenna Status of the i4 Reader and see if your connected antenna is shown in the web interface as "Enabled".

Demo Application

The i4 Reader demo application serves to get you up and running with the i4 Reader and see what the device is capable of doing.

Acquiring the i4 Reader Demo Application

To get started using the i4 Reader, follow the next steps to acquire the demo application:

1. Click here to download the i4 Reader demo application
2. Extract the zip archive
   
   • Right click the archive and press "Extract All..."
   • Select the desired extraction location for the application
   • Open the directory where the extracted application resides
3. Run the application with administrator privileges
   Administrator privileges are required so that the application can create a Firewall exception to allow incoming connections.
   • Right click on "Reader Demo App.exe" and select "Run as Administrator"

Configuring the i4 Reader Demo Application

By default, the i4 Reader will use the TCP server (Telnet) mode. Follow the next steps to configure the demo application:

1. Press the "Settings" button in the top right cornet of the application
2. Make sure that the Telnet Modus checkbox is checked, as indicated in the image below
3. Enter the i4 Reader IP address or the i4 reader DNS host name in the IP address text field.
4. Set the Port number to 23
5. Press the Save button

Locating the i4 Reader

Head on over to the Spots page by pressing the Spots button in the top right corner. This page will list your i4 Reader in the table as indicated in the image below. The i4 Reader can be configured by pressing the Settings button next to the i4 Reader that you want to change.

Configuring the i4 Reader

i4 Reader settings can be changed by pressing the Settings button in the table as indicated in Configuring the i4 Reader Demo Application. This will show a window similar to the image below. See the Smartspot configuration reference article to read about all the available settings which are available. Hovering over the settings name will show a tool tip with information about that specific setting.

On the Antennas page individual antennas are listed and can be enabled/disabled as indicated by the image below.

Viewing Presences

When the Live Presences button is clicked on the top bar, all current presences in the i4 Reader are listed in a table. Filtering options are available by pressing the arrow-down button.

See What are Presences? in the .NET SDK documentation for more information about presences.

Acquiring Raw Hits

Raw hits can be seen by pressing the Raw Hits in the top bar. This is shown in the image below.

See What are Hits? in the .NET SDK documentation for more information about hits.

Creating a Custom Application

The demo application featured in this article is an example usage of the Smartspot / i4 reader .NET SDK. Custom applications interacting with the i4 reader can be developed using this SDK. See Introduction to the .NET SDK.