Asset management using an asset tag device

• US 10,304,304 B1
• Filed: 06/21/2017
• Issued: 05/28/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/02/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PNC Bank National Association (The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Enovate Medical, LLC (Enovate Medical Holdings, LLC)
• Inventors: Miller, David R., Farrell, Arlow
• Primary Examiner(s): Tweel, Jr., John A
• Application Number:
  US15/629,105
• Time in Patent Office: 706 Days
• Field of Search: 3405721
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/0008 General problems related to the reading of electronic memory record carriers, independent of its reading method, e.g. power transfer
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10366 the interrogation device being adapted for miscellaneous applications
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 13/2417 having a radio frequency identification chip
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 5/77 for interrogation
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication

Abstract

An asset tag device including a housing, a battery disposed within the housing, a circuit board disposed within the housing and in electrical communication with the battery. The circuit board includes a local memory, a transceiver to detect local signals and transmit a response packet, and a processor. The processor to identify the detected local signals, determine whether the detected local signals include at least one beacon signal, store, to the local memory, the at least one beacon signal, sort, in the local memory, the stored at least one beacon signal by proximity to the asset tag device, parse the sorted at least one beacon signal, and append tag information to the parsed at least one beacon signal to generate the response packet.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a beacon, at a fixed location, configured to communicate beacon information;

a tag, configured to receive the beacon information and communicate tag information, wherein the tag information comprises at least a portion of the beacon information; and

a receiver configured to receive the tag information and determine a real-time location of the tag based on the received tag information;

wherein the tag is further configured to;

scan for an available beacon signal;

identify a beacon signal as originating from at least one nearest beacon;

store, to local memory on the tag, the beacon information from the beacon signal of the at least one nearest beacon;

parse the beacon information; and

append tag data to generate the tag information.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the receiver comprises a hub configured to receive the tag information and transmit the received tag information in a modified format; and

the receiver comprises a server configured to receive the modified tag information and calculate the real-time location of the tag.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the server is further configured to calculate the real-time location of the tag by extracting beacon data from the modified tag information and compare the extracted beacon data to a list of beacon locations.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the beacon information comprises a major identifier and a minor identifier.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the tag is further configured to ignore a detected signal from a non-beacon device.