NFC tags survive wet duties at festival

Tagged wristbands were given away to hundreds of selected festival-goers over the four days of the O2 Wireless Festival last week.

Innovision Research and Technology, MIG and O2 ran a successful trial of NFC wristband technology at the O2 Wireless Festival last week.

The tagged wristbands, enabled by Topaz NFC tags from Innovision, were given away to hundreds of selected festival-goers over the four days of the event as part of a "random acts of kindness" promotion.

Topaz tags are the NFC Forum standard-mandated Tag Type 1 and the tag's 96byte memory is ideal for NFC applications such as access control.

The robust tagged wristband form-factor proved rugged enough for the interactive environment of a four-day festival.

"This is yet another great example of an NFC application outside the electronic payment sphere", said Ken Robertson, Tag Business Development Manager at Innovision.

"It further demonstrates the versatility of the Topaz tag in its many form-factors".

Recipients of the wristband used them to get exclusive access to the O2 bus, where wristbands were scanned using a handheld PDA - enabling users to access a static viewing platform offering unrivalled views of headline acts on the main stage.

They could also receive a free cocktail at The Stage Bar by scanning their wristband at a fixed-point NFC terminal and gain entry to exclusive VIP toilets and cloakroom, again, gaining entry simply by scanning their tagged wristband using a handheld PDA.

"The tags proved to be versatile and robust - we used them on wristbands and on the limited-edition silver jewellery for O2's 'Very VIPs'", said a delighted Chris Smith of MIG, Project Manager for the NFC Wristbands.

"As well as withstanding a range of conditions - including downpours on Sunday - the tags worked well with various RFID readers we were using (handheld PDA and kiosks)".

Topaz is the NFC Forum standard mandated NFC/RFID Type 1 Tag format ISO14443A, offering 96byte of read/write memory at 13.56MHz, able to support multiple NFC applications.

Recent applications have included remote worker tracking, a variety of smart poster applications, and wireless Bluetooth service initiation, linking an NFC mobile phone handset to a digital picture frame to allow the user to download images from the phone to the frame at a touch.

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