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Easily-add battery-free wireless sensors to everyday objects: system implementation and usability study

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Abstract

The trend of IoT brings more and more connected smart devices into our daily lives, which can enable a ubiquitous sensing and interaction experience. However, augmenting many everyday objects with sensing abilities is not easy. BitID is an unobtrusive, low-cost, training-free, and easy-to-use technique that enables users to add sensing abilities to everyday objects in a DIY manner. A BitID sensor can be easily made from a UHF RFID tag and deployed on an object so that the tag’s readability (whether the tag is identified by RFID readers) is mapped to binary states of the object (e.g., whether a door is open or closed). To further validate BitID’s sensing performance, we use a robotic arm to press BitID buttons repetitively and swipe on BitID sliders. The average press recognition F1-score is 98.9% and the swipe recognition F1-score is 96.7%. To evaluate BitID’s usability, we implement a prototype system that supports BitID sensor registration, semantic definition, status display, and real-time state and event detection. Using the system, users configured and deployed a BitID sensor with an average time duration of 4.9 min. 23 of the 24 users deployed BitID sensors worked accurately and robustly. In addition to the previously proposed ’short’ BitID sensor, we propose new ’open’ BitID sensors which show similar performance as ’short’ sensors.

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Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this work are available from the corresponding author, Yuntao Wang, upon reasonable request.

Notes

  1. Detailed explanation of RFID inlays can be found at https://skyrfid.com/RFID_Tag_Inlays.php.

  2. https://www.dobot.cc/dobot-magician/product-overview.html.

  3. https://github.com/AlexFxw/BitID.

  4. https://ifttt.com/.

  5. https://yeelight.com/zh_CN/product/wifi-led-c.

  6. https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/play1.html.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No.6213000120, Mobile Working Project under Grant No. 044060014, NSFC Fund for Young Scholars under Grant Nos. 62102401, 62002198, Innovation Project of Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No. E061040, and Open Project of Beijing Key Laboratory of Mobile Computing and Pervasive Devices.

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Author notes

  1. Tengxiang Zhang

    Present address: Beijing Key Laboratory of Mobile Computing and Pervasive Devices, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, UCAS, Beijing, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Tengxiang Zhang, Zi Qian, Hsuan Wei Fan, Jie Ren, Yuntao Wang & Yuanchun Shi

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  1. Tengxiang Zhang
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  2. Zi Qian
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  3. Hsuan Wei Fan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuntao Wang.

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Conflict of interest

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Code availability

The source code of both the front-end and back-end of the implemented BitID system is open-sourced at https://github.com/AlexFxw/BitID. The source code for user studies is available from the corresponding author, Yuntao Wang, upon reasonable request.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1: Tutorial video used in the study. (MP4 18841 KB)

JSON Format

JSON Format

1.1 Object Sensing BitID

The below JSON string shows an open BitID sensor applied on a drawer. When the tag is identified (’ON’), the drawer should be closed; when the tag is not identified (’OFF’), the drawer should be opened.

figure a

1.2 Interaction sensing BitID

The below JSON string shows a short BitID button that toggles a smart LED bulb when the headset of a phone is put down, while toggles the mute setting of a smart speaker when the headset of the phone is picked up.

figure b

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Zhang, T., Qian, Z., Fan, H.W. et al. Easily-add battery-free wireless sensors to everyday objects: system implementation and usability study. CCF Trans. Pervasive Comp. Interact. 4, 45–60 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42486-022-00087-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42486-022-00087-5

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