I'm working in a project, where we are developing a system to detect whether a truck was or wasn't there. Consider that the place is far away from any kind of source as energy, etc., and we need the data at real time on the system, so we will use, in this case, 3g or wifi.
We're going to track 50 trucks, more or less, and up to 10 readers in a range of 10 meters.
We were thinking of using 2.4 Ghz RFID with active tags. The reader would have a raspberry pi to process and send the information to a server.
Is bluetooth also good for this situation (remembering that security is also important)? Or any other kind of technology?
Best Answer
Why aren't you considering consumer GPS trackers? They can be powered from the onboard 12V supply, and all you need is to download the track the device has collected, after the shift has ended. These are fairly cheap, you can get decent one for about $40.
There are multiple commercial solutions for the task you have - google for "fleet management gps". Prices start from less than $100 per truck, you get nice dashboards and lots of analytics - most sophisticated ones will even alert you if drivers are stealing fuel from tanks or are taking side jobs.
P.S. If you'll stick with wireless option (RFID or Bluetooth): why are you worried about range at all? Put passive RFID card in a box under glass cover, put the box on the site you are monitoring and make truck drivers stop there and walk couple of feet with the reader to it. No power is required, zero maintenance is necessary.