Patrick J. Sweeney II | July 5, 2008
The ODIN team recently analyzed the much talked about Mojix system and I asked them to give their thoughts on it, Chris Fennig was the primary contributor this week.
The geek in all of us was titillated and jumped in with our normal approach: (1) listen to what the vendor claims and (2) test to determine what the system can actually deliver.
We honed in on four technical features:
• interference rejection,
• dynamic amplification range,
• max insertion loss and
• shadowing effect.
In many ways, the Mojix system passed our evaluation with flying colors. Although it clearly takes knowledge of physics and RF to get the most from the system.
It was an interesting week of testing which gave us great insight on the value of their technology. Once again we were learning in our controlled environment so we could best put our knowledge to use for our clients, rather than learn on their dime. It’s a head start that will pay off shortly when we deploy the first production Mojix system.
After seeing the system firsthand, our engineers can honestly say that Mojix represents the first new product offering they’ve seen since shortly after the Gen 2 air interface protocol was ratified in early 2005. Sure they’ve seen readers get smaller, cheaper, dumber, bigger, smarter, but they hadn’t seen any fundamental change, until now.
One of our team members Chris Fennig posed the question, “What does lack of disruptive innovation reflect about the RFID industry?” Chris was reminded of an article written in the New York Times about NASA’s Shuttle program entitled, “For Parts, NASA Boldly Goes…on Ebay.”
NASA, which helped incubate the chip industry through the 1960’s, uses Ebay to procure decades old technology to maintain its status quo. The rationale is simple: “If it has worked before, it will work today.” This type of thinking seems to have crept into the RFID industry and Mojix will capitalize on the situation.
Although RFID designers may be using the latest Intel chipset, is anybody analyzing the fundamental technology assumptions? The ODIN labs suggested a variation of the Mojix system to colleagues back in 2005. When we asked a respected RFID design veteran at a leading reader vendor his opinion, he informed us that the FCC would not allow such an approach, because insertion losses due to cabling could not be overcome. Mojix has proven this position false.
We hope that Mojix will spur other technology vendors on to question the old assumptions, take risks and create new variations of RFID technology. One thing is certain, a significant percentage of RFID opportunities require customized form factors to capture business value. Today, our engineering team has only four basic categories of raw materials to work with: fixed readers, handheld/wearable readers, reader modules and Mojix.
Not a bad market position for a technology vendor to assume. What new technology category will other companies contribute now that the RFID market has crossed the chasm?
The geek in all of us was titillated and jumped in with our normal approach: (1) listen to what the vendor claims and (2) test to determine what the system can actually deliver.
We honed in on four technical features:
• interference rejection,
• dynamic amplification range,
• max insertion loss and
• shadowing effect.
In many ways, the Mojix system passed our evaluation with flying colors. Although it clearly takes knowledge of physics and RF to get the most from the system.
It was an interesting week of testing which gave us great insight on the value of their technology. Once again we were learning in our controlled environment so we could best put our knowledge to use for our clients, rather than learn on their dime. It’s a head start that will pay off shortly when we deploy the first production Mojix system.
After seeing the system firsthand, our engineers can honestly say that Mojix represents the first new product offering they’ve seen since shortly after the Gen 2 air interface protocol was ratified in early 2005. Sure they’ve seen readers get smaller, cheaper, dumber, bigger, smarter, but they hadn’t seen any fundamental change, until now.
One of our team members Chris Fennig posed the question, “What does lack of disruptive innovation reflect about the RFID industry?” Chris was reminded of an article written in the New York Times about NASA’s Shuttle program entitled, “For Parts, NASA Boldly Goes…on Ebay.”
NASA, which helped incubate the chip industry through the 1960’s, uses Ebay to procure decades old technology to maintain its status quo. The rationale is simple: “If it has worked before, it will work today.” This type of thinking seems to have crept into the RFID industry and Mojix will capitalize on the situation.
Although RFID designers may be using the latest Intel chipset, is anybody analyzing the fundamental technology assumptions? The ODIN labs suggested a variation of the Mojix system to colleagues back in 2005. When we asked a respected RFID design veteran at a leading reader vendor his opinion, he informed us that the FCC would not allow such an approach, because insertion losses due to cabling could not be overcome. Mojix has proven this position false.
We hope that Mojix will spur other technology vendors on to question the old assumptions, take risks and create new variations of RFID technology. One thing is certain, a significant percentage of RFID opportunities require customized form factors to capture business value. Today, our engineering team has only four basic categories of raw materials to work with: fixed readers, handheld/wearable readers, reader modules and Mojix.
Not a bad market position for a technology vendor to assume. What new technology category will other companies contribute now that the RFID market has crossed the chasm?
