CrossMgr: Support for Unlimited Readers

Post date: May 26, 2017 2:10:43 PM

For about a year now, CrossMgr has supported an unlimited number of chip readers through connections to CrossMgrImpinj and CrossMgrAlien.

This means that you can put a second battery-powered reader on the other side of a finish line communicating with CrossMgr over a wireless connection.

Or, if you have a finish-line gantry, you can use multiple readers to support more than 4 antennas.

Each reader is controlled by a separate instance of CrossMgrImpinj, and each instance of CrossMgrImpinj talks to CrossMgr. As the readers are controlled separately, losing the connection to one does not bring down the connection to the others.

Each reader enjoys the full hot-reconnect ability of CrossMgrImpinj - the connection will be restored automatically if the power or network goes down to a reader. CrossMgrImpinj also computes a time-correction for each reader ensuring that read times sent to CrossMgr by the different readers are synchronized with the CrossMgr computer's clock. This means that the system "just works" even if the readers do not have the same internal time.

The CrossMgrImpinj instances can run on the same computer as CrossMgr, or different computers. The only requirement is that CrossMgrImpinj has to be able to connect with its reader and CrossMgr on a network.

CrossMgr's auto-correct feature will filter out any duplicate reads - no problem there.

This capability allows full flexibility in utilizing multiple readers at the finish.