Configuring the tags
After starting the Pozyx Device Configurator, connect the tag to your computer. The Wearable Tag or Industrial Tag should be placed on the NFC reader, which is connected with USB to your computer. The settings of your tag will become visible once the tag is placed on top of the NFC reader and NFC is selected in the device configurator. The settings that you will see depend on the tag you're using.
This tool allows you as well to activate or disactivate the tag by pressing the button ‘Activate’/'Deactivate'.
Industrial Tag
Wearable Interactive Tag
General
The unique tag ID, firmware/hardware version, and battery level of the tag can be checked. Additionally, there is the option to enter text into a field associated with the tag. This field can be used to provide additional context when checking the tag with the device configurator. It is important to note that the text field is an internal parameter only and is not included in the UWB packet transmitted to the system.
UWB settings
The Ultra-Wideband (UWB) settings of the tag must match the UWB settings of the anchors in order for the system to function. It is, however, not possible to alter the UWB settings of the tag due to certification reasons. If the UWB settings of the tags and anchors would not match, please contact us through http://support.pozyx.io for assistance.
Aloha TDOA settings
With these parameters, you can configure the update rate of the tag and control the variation. The update rate is the number of times per second a new positioning transmission is sent. One position transmission is called a ‘blink’. Increasing the update rate can improve positioning accuracy, especially for fast-moving assets, but it will also decrease battery life. For most applications the default update rate of 1Hz is sufficient.
The variation is a parameter to reduce the possibility of packet collisions between multiple tags. Keeping this to 25 ms should be fine in most cases.
Sleep & static settings
Industrial and Wearable Tags with firmware v2.0 and higher have the ability to enter sleep mode to conserve battery power. This feature can be enabled by checking the 'Enable device auto-sleep' box. The built-in accelerometer will then detect when the device is static, after which the update rate will be reduced to the sleep update rate, which can be specified with the 'Wake Up Every (ms)' setting.
You can also customize the tag's responsiveness to movement while in sleep mode with the 'Responsiveness (ms)' setting. To fine-tune the sensitivity of movement detection, you can select one of several profiles ranging from 0 to 7. Profiles 0 to 3 are designated as static profiles, with 0 being the most sensitive and 3 being the least sensitive. Profiles 4 to 7 are designated as sleep profiles, with 4 being the most sensitive and 7 being the least sensitive. For example, selecting profile 0 will cause the device to be highly sensitive to movements. Then the tag will wake up and become visible even when the smallest movement is detected. On the other hand, selecting profile 3 will cause the device to be less sensitive to movement, so that very small movements might not trigger the wake up threshold.
It is recommended to use the default values of 2 for the static profile and 6 for the sleep profile in most use cases.
Accelerometer data
The accelerometer data used to trigger the sleep function is data that is also being sent in the TDOA blinks and can thus be read out in the MQTT stream. The acceleration is measured along 3-axis (so each accelerometer update is an array of 3 values) and is expressed in mg (milli-G's). The interval of the accelerometer is ± 2 g, which means that it can measure a maximum acceleration of + or - 2 g.
The update rate of the accelerometer is configured independently from the positioning update rate (= TDOA update rate), but we recommend that the TDOA update rate and the update rate of the accelerometer are roughly aligned as one TDOA blink can contain a maximum of 28 accelerometer measurements. This means that e.g. if we have an accelerometer update rate of 25 Hz and a TDOA update rate of 0.5 Hz, 50 measurements will need to be sent in one blink. If this situation occurs, the tag will throw away the first 22 measurements and only transmit the last 28 measurements.
If you don’t want to lose any accelerometer updates, make sure your update rates comply to the following formula: (Accelerometer update rate (Hz))/(TDOA update rate (Hz)) < 28.
Button configuration
The Interactive edition of the Wearable Tag has a button that can be used to:
Turn it on and off
Cycle between states
Send out events
With the Pozyx Device Configurator you can customize this behavior to best suit your needs. Press the Edit settings button to get started.
After pressing the Edit Settings button you have the option to select one of the preconfigured button configurations in the Actions field:
Off (LEDs on): When you select this button configuration the button will be disabled but the LED will still blink to indicate that the tag is powered on.
Off (LEDs off): When you select this button configuration the button will be disabled and the LED will no longer blink. You won't have an indication about whether the tag is powered on or off.
Default: See the Action Configurator section for information about the default button behavior.
You can also change the button behavior completely by pressing the Configure Actions button. When you click on this button you will get a pop up in which you can create a new button configuration. More information about this screen can be found below in the Action Configurator section.
After configuring the button behavior you'll need to press the save button:
Give it a name:
And then select your new configuration on the main screen and click Apply:
Action configurator
By default the button behavior will be configured as follows:
Long pressing the button will turn the tag on/off.
Short pressing the button will send out an event (with ID 0).
This event is visible in the MQTT stream, more on that below.Double pressing the button will put the tag in the next state and also send out an event (with ID 1).
This state and event will also be visible in the MQTT stream, more on that below as well.
Long / short / double pressing is defined as:
Command | Description |
|---|---|
Long press | Press and hold the button for 3 seconds |
Single press | Push the button for less than 1 second |
Double press | Push the button twice in half a second |
Action: Transmit event only
This action will send out an event with the ID you specify.
The event ID and the timestamp of a click can be found in the MQTT stream under tagData → events:
"events": [
{
"type": 0,
"timestamp": 1615930179.1052644
},
{
"type": 0,
"timestamp": 1615930179.827918
},
{
"type": 0,
"timestamp": 1615930180.628115
}
]The events array will hold the last 3 events and each event will be sent for 255 blinks (unless it's pushed out of the array sooner by more recent events). The event ID can be found in the type field.
See our MQTT data structure page to see the complete data structure of an MQTT packet.
Action: Cycle state + event
This action will not only send out an event as described above but will also change the state of the tag.
A tag can cycle between 2 or 3 states, depending on how you configure it (# States), and its state information can be found in the MQTT stream under tagData → status. By assigning different event IDs to different actions (e.g. event ID 0 to a short press and event ID 1 to a double press) you can capture the timestamp of when a state change has occurred:
"status": "2",
"events": [
{
"type": 1,
"timestamp": 1615930179.1052644
},
{
"type": 0,
"timestamp": 1615930179.827918
},
{
"type": 0,
"timestamp": 1615930180.628115
}
]See our MQTT data structure page to see the complete data structure of an MQTT packet.
LED behavior
Depending on the button configuration the following table gives the LEDs behavior per action:
Description | Action | LED behavior |
|---|---|---|
Long press | Power on | Green LED lights up for 1 second |
Power off | Red LED lights up for 1 second | |
Single press | Transmit event only | Green LED blinks 1 time |
Double press | Transmit event only | Green LED blinks 2 times |
Single/Double press | Cycle state + event | Color of the state gets blinked. |
By default, the LED will blink once per second, and the color of the LED will indicate the current state.
Battery impact
The TDOA update rate is the most significant factor affecting the battery life of all tags. The higher the update rate, the shorter the battery life will be. The accelerometer update rate also has a minor impact on battery life. The more updates that are sent, the more battery capacity will be used. For the Interactive Wearable Tag, disabling the LED blink feature can also slightly improve battery life. At room temperature, you can expect the battery life of all tags to be as follows:
Wearable Tag
Industrial Tag
Bulk configurator
Configuring a large amount of tags is a time consuming job with the method described above. Therefore the Device Configurator has a bulk configuration option. The settings only have to be entered once and will be applied on every tag that is placed on the NFC reader.
Press the tools button and select Bulk NFC Configure to get started, this will open a separate screen in which all the settings described above can be enabled, disabled or changed. Make sure the correct hardware type and firmware version are entered, these can be found while reading out one of the tags. Once the correct settings are entered, press the start button to start configuring the tags.
After pressing the start button, the screen will look like this without a tag
When a tag is placed on the NFC reader, the progress of writing the settings will be visible by the green checkmarks that replace the red crosses. Once all settings are changed the screen will look like this:
The settings of the tag were successfully changed and the next tag can now be placed on the NFC reader.