ActiveWave

ActiveWave made an active radio-frequency identification (RFID) system: battery-powered tags, readers, field generators and the software that tied them together. Touraj Ghaffari founded ActiveWave, Inc. in 2001 to build it.

Today the system lives on as the TigeRFID project. After Touraj passed away in 2016, his three sons released everything associated with it under the Apache 2.0 license. The project's repository holds the original files, and this site explains them.

A redesign is underway. The TigeRFID project is rebuilding the system from the ground up, hardware and software. Until the new system exists, this site describes the original one.

On this site

• How the original system worked: what the tags, readers, field generators and software did, with a page for each product.
• History: how the system came to be, and how Touraj's sons opened it to everyone.
• Use cases: the nine uses the old site described, what a builder would need today, and ideas for home.

Get the files

The TigeRFID repository keeps everything released in 2017 and 2018, byte for byte, at its activewave-2018 tag. The original files include the schematics and board files, the bills of materials, the software and the programming interface.

Nobody has rebuilt the original hardware recently, so these files may not make a working unit as they stand. Nothing on this site says a rebuild may transmit on the original radios' frequencies as they are. Radio rules differ by country, and the TigeRFID project checks them before it chooses a rebuild's radios.

To build your own, start at the TigeRFID repository, whose readme tells where the rebuild stands. If you build one, or try, please report back in the repository's issues.