RFID Technologies: Is RFID The Future For Your Living Room Network?

In a July, 2006 report, Dallas based research firm Park Associates forecasted that the number of US households with entertainment networks will increase from 4 million households in 2006 to 22.2 million households in 2010. This whopping five fold increase creates an opportunity for new technologies having a unique value proposition to overtake the big guys and gain a large market share in home networking products. One company is developing a product portfolio in the belief that wireless and "batteryless" systems incorporating RFID will be widely accepted by consumers due to low acquisition and operation costs, low maintenance, tiny form factor, system scalability, and ability to interact with many devices (not to mention millions of RFID tagged products).

DramaView Technology Inc. announced today it is developing a variety of products that communicate through a central RFID based processor targeted for your living room. "Our products for the home network generally fall into three categories including user input devices, environment input devices, and system output devices…", according to Ray M. Alden, President of DramaView, "…advantages of our devices include that they are inexpensive, operate wirelessly, and require no traditional batteries." DramaView cites examples of user input devices that are wireless and require no batteries such as television remote controls, computer keyboards, hand writing pads, and a computer mouse. According to Alden, the devices can be integrated together into many form factors including for example a "$50 laptop computer that requires no batteries, has no internal electronics, and wirelessly off loads all of the processing and memory to a processor and systems connected to an RFID reader that senses user inputs and drives the laptop's display to report system outputs." Other wireless and batteryless devices that DramaView is developing to interact with the RFID reader in your living room include security sensors, smoke detectors, motion detectors, and associated audible alarms.

DramaView's RFID division is in start up mode and is in discussions with at least two key consumer electronics product companies. According to Alden, "DramaView has been quietly developing an intellectual property portfolio encompassing a range of novel RFID based technologies, devices, and associated processes, and is now selectively courting partners best positioned to capture large global markets protected by our growing intellectual property portfolio."