Evaluation board for battery-free wireless sensors and actuators

The Spider, from Farsens, is an evaluation board for the ANDY100 UHF RFID IC. The chip harvests radio frequency energy from commercial UHF RFID readers and communicates with them using EPC C1G2 standard commands. Also, it includes an SPI master to drive sensors while keeping the tag plus sensor device battery-free. The Spider includes the ANDY100 chip and a start-up circuit to allow developers to work directly with SPI sensors or connect a microcontroller of their choice for further processing. The Spider can also be used to test multiple sensor, actuator or other devices. By balancing power consumption against read range, developers can easily test / prototype different ideas and create proof of concepts that can later on be implemented into final products, says the company.