Items and Locations

This article explains the two key concepts of Items and Locations used in the Intellifi Platform.

Item

Any object or 'thing'  in the real world that has been identified by a Tag is represented in the Brain as an Item.

For the Brain there is no fundamental difference between items identified via an RFID tag, a BLE tag or a Barcode or any other technology. So the concept of an item is technology independent, saving a lot of hassle for a business application developer supporting multiple identification technologies.

For each item the Brain keeps various properties up-to-date. Item properties include:

• creation time - first time ever seen on the system
• presence - whether the item is currently visible (present) by one or more of the Smartspots
• location - the current location assigned to by the Brain
• time move - the time of movement to the current location
• label - a human readable label that can be assigned to an item
• code_hex - the (unique) identifier of the Tag that the item represents (Code_hex is equal to the EPC code for RFID tags and the UUID for BLE tags expressed has a hexadecimal value).
• technology and protocol references that the item support - usually not needed, though available upon desire.

Location

Any area (room, floor, aisle or zone) in the real world that is covered by at least one Smartspot is represented in the Brain as a Location.

So, a location is an administrative representation of that area in the physical world, provided that the area is covered by the detection range of a Smartspot.

The notion of Location is used by business applications to determine where an item is.

The actual location of an item is assigned or updated by the localization service of the Brain. Once an item moves from one location to another, the Brain will update the location of the item and also generate a movement event.

It's important to recognize that an Item always has a Location assigned. Even in the situation when an item is actually not visible by one of the Smartspots (not present), the Item location is the last location assigned.

Example on Item Presence and Location changes

Imagine a building with 2 floors. The entry area to both floors is covered by a Smartspot. The stairway between both floors has no coverage. Location name assigned to each Smartspot corresponds with location in the building, e.g. floor 1 and floor 2. The movement of an Item from floor 1 to floor 2 will be represented by Brain as follows:

1. Item is downstairs and out of range of any Smartspots.

• Present state: not present
• Location: floor 1

2. Item moves to the entry area of floor 1 and now in range of Smartspot 1.

• Present state: present
• Location: floor 1

3. Item moves to the stairs and is now outside the range of any Smartspot 1.

• Present state: not present
• Location: floor 1

4. Item moves to the entry area of floor 2 and now in range of Smartspot 2.

• Present state: present
• Location: floor 2

5. Item on floor 2, moves far away and is out of range from Smartspot 2

• Present state: not present
• Location: floor 2

For scenarios where Smartspot ranges overlap, the Location Engine will estimate the Location of an Item based on data from Smartspots and updates the Location accordingly.