the question pretty much states the basic idea, but here is my use-case; tabletop war-gaming.
Optimally I would like to be able to tag each of my “play pieces” with some sort of tag, place a few sensors around the perimeter of the play space, and have a device running an application that would be able to tell how far such and such tag/unit is from any other in the play area.
As such:
- Such a system would need to be able to differentiate different ‘tags’, or if tags aren’t used, some method of doing so
- Have millimeter or better accuracy, and scope over a variable play area approx. 5 to 10 feet cubed.
- Be able to ‘refresh’ in a reasonable amount of time. (every few seconds is good enough)
Optionally
- Some sort of powerless tag if its workable (so I don’t have to worry about switching batteries on hundreds of small figures)
- As many ‘store bought’ components as possible. (and hence, hopefully reasonably affordable and with a minimum of home made parts)
I’m a software guy, so once something gets to the point where there are raw numbers coming into a computer I'm good. The figures just need to be found/tracked in the play-space accurately, and the computer can crunch the numbers to determine distances. As far as electronics, I’m having a hard time finding (see edit below) or even thinking of how to put this system together. I have looked at rfid tags, and they seem good for storing information, but not so good at triangulating distances. Any help or advice would be appreciated, but for this question;
What hardware/technology/setup can possibly (and hopefully nicely) fulfill the above requirements? Is there such a thing?
EDIT (plausibility)
I did some more searching and found; http://lunantech.blogspot.com/ The videos seem to demonstrate that this is possible? This gentleman seems to have achieved an effect similar to what I'm looking for. (I'm just not sure how, is this applicable?)