TrustPoint Blog

I recently attended an NFC Forum meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland. On my last day in the city I hiked up to Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park. I highly recommend it if you go! I really enjoy site seeing and doing some challenging hikes. Once I reached my goal, I thought It would be great to tag this location some how in a non destructive way. I had the urge to leave a message “I was here”. It would be nice to read messages from other travelers who reached the summit. Water-proof NFC tags would be ideal for this. They would have to be attached to something secure though. Here are some general things that could be done with waterproof NFC tags:

1. Location/elevation Tag. Like survey markers I’d love to know my exact location and elevation. The official survey markers are very expensive, NFC tags are not!
2. Information about that location. Often once you reach a location you would like more information on the spot. NFC tag is idea for that.
3. Geocaching. It appears that NFC tags are being used in geocaching treasure hunts here. All kinds of uses such as leaving messages, puzzles, passwords to protected websites, etc.
4. Leave a message. This could be done by simply writing your message to a tag and then attaching it to that location. Other’s can tap you tag to read the message. Perhaps a safer version of the “Love Lock” could be created with a NFC tag.
5. Scientific research. NFC tags with URL can be used to keep track of locations as well as moving objects such as animals. Taping the tag provides analytics. How many visitors, when were samples last taken, how often, etc. This does require network access however the URLs could be cached for later use when the network was restored. Active NFC tags attached to sensors could record data about the environment as well.

I invite more creative people than I to add to my list.

This blog post was originally posted on the author’s blog. It has been reposted here with permission.