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KevinYee has a piece published on miceage today talking about Magicband and the technology involved.
Link
Kevin, I have to say - have you been living under a rock for the last year with regard to this stuff? This article is atrocious.
It starts off with...
All of a sudden? It's been known for over a year, since the FCC filing (discussed here
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/disney’s-rfid-magic-band-arrives-on-the-fcc.852492/ ) that the magic band has two RFID chips AND a 2.4GHz radio that transmits.
Second, Disney has long since acknowledged the presence of 'Long Range Readers' - which is what the 2.4GHz radio transmits to.
Then we have have 'proof' this reading from a distance happens. Uhh.. yeah.. its been there all along. It's covered in the technical stuff, and has been rumored from the start for things like the attractions that interact with you (IASW dolls and signs remember??)
The question has always been to what kind of resolution and what interest Disney has with the long range reading - not if it ever existed. It's the exact scenario Iger countered in his letter saying they could opt out of Bands and use the RFID enabled card only - which does NOT have the 2.4GHz radio and hence, no long range reader support.
Counter-Intuitive? No -- it makes perfect sense. Different applications have different needs. That's why the band has 3 different things in it - and not just one. You don't broadcast sensitive info and require greater access for that.
If that is what you took away from those discussions - the fault is on YOU Kevin. Those are the conclusions people had and knew about. You've either misunderstood, or miscontrued the facts to serve a predisposed conclusion.
The technical ERRORs in the article continue on and on..
UGH.. did you just take the facts throw them in a blender and see what came out? It's not a 2.4GHz RFID tag... there are two RFID tags in them, one HF (13.56MHz) and one UHF (433MHz) tag. The 2.4GHz reference is to the radio in the device intended to broadcast to the 'wireless infrastructure'. The two RFID tags are passive tags that need irradiating to function.
Really??? Welcome to 12 months ago Kevin.
Yes the magicband has long range capabilities - the question has always been what is the intent for those. Yes, the magicband has near field capabilities (the HF tag) - it's what's been used for door locks, and presumably the FP+ and tap to pay systems. The passive UHF tag has a longer range in theory than the HF tag and it's use is unknown.
The photopass system could be using either the 2.4GHz radio or the UHF tag.
It's not known yet if the ticket only or KTTW cards have the UHF chip or not.
I speculate that the photopass stuff works only with the 2.4GHz radio - because it doesn't require an active reader, would be more flexible in attractions (greater distance pickup) and gives more reason to upsell to the bands.
Disney's intentions with the long range readers are not verified - there are LOTS of technical capabilities depending on what their intentions are. They could be real-time only, they could log it all, they could use it for simple crowd management, they could create audit logs of triangulation of every guest at various points throughout their entire stay. Some of these are more realistic than others - it's all down to the motivations and how much effort one is willing to invest.
