Taking proper care of perishables is an essential part of the supply chain. Whether it is health related (medicines or blood), food (meat and fish) or other items (flowers), maintaining proper conditions from production and transport to the retailers and customers is critical.

For years, there have been temperature-sensing devices such as thermochromic labels that showed if temperatures had reached certain ranges. However, these sorts of systems require individuals either reading or scanning the labels.

Today, there are solutions with sensors on the market. Identiv has taken temperature logging one step further by adding an NFC-enabling component, allowing readings to be uploaded to the cloud.

This product, the uTrust Sense Temperature Tracker, has caught the eye of the industry, earning Identiv the Best New Product award during the 11th Annual RFID Journal Awards at RFID Journal LIVE! 2017.

Stephane Ardiley, Identiv’s director of product management, said that uTrust Sense’s key advantage is that it is a complete solution that tracks and stores readings, can be read by NFC readers, and can be uploaded to the cloud.

“The major difference with our uTrust Sense Temperature Tracker is that it is not purely a tag or a sensor,” Ardiley continued. “It is really an end-to-end solution. We provide the tags, readers, mobile application, cloud solution and analytics. People like that it is a complete solution.

“We add NFC functionality,” Ardiley added. “The trackers that are out there need to be connected to a USB port to be tracked and send the data to a remote system. We do a lot of custom design. We attach a thin printed battery to an RFID inlay and make it into a label.”

Ardiley said that the RFID Journal award is a tremendous honor.

“It is great to be recognized by the market,” he added. “People are really looking into complete solutions, and they liked our live, real demo.”

Identiv specializes in four key areas; physical access control systems (PACS), smart card reader technology, credentials, and RFID, NFC, and inlays. The company offers complete turnkey solutions, including inlays, cards, readers and the software, which has helped in its development of the uTrust Sense system. Identiv has been working on the uTrust Sense Temperature Tracker for nearly two years, and launched it a month ago.

“It is our second generation,” Ardiley added. “We have already sold 50,000 of our first generation, and after the trade show, we are already taking our first orders.”

Ardiley said that Identiv is working with partners on the cloud system, the label and printed battery, and converters are successfully running the thin inlay.

“Our goal is to deliver the inlay with the battery attached to the converters,” he noted. “We are working with three converters. It takes just a few weeks to get up and running, and it has been proven to be OK.”

Price is always a critical issue for brand owners, and Ardiley said that uTrust Sense’s price is being accepted in the US and Europe.

“We are working on some large opportunities with millions of pieces, where pricing is critical, but we are also developing projects that call for 500, 1,000 or 10,000 pieces, and the price point was OK from the customer standpoint,” he said.

Ardiley said that one major challenge is making sure all the information is verified and trusted, and Identiv developed a cryptographic algorithm for transmissions to the cloud.

“One of the challenges was to provide a solution that is secure. The data is sent from point A to point B, and you want to make sure that it can be relied upon,” he pointed out. “We had to be able to encrypt the data so it can be trusted.”

Ardiley said that the potential for uTrust Sense is practically limitless.

“We are really excited,” Ardiley concluded. “It has been a long bumpy road but the market is reacting well to this. You can put it on any box that you ship, for perishable products like flowers, meat and fish. We see a lot of traction in the smart pharmaceutical space, products like blood or vaccines. We are also looking at other types of sensors, such as humidity and moisture. There are endless opportunities. We could be talking millions of tags.


David Savastano is the editor of Printed Electronics Now, a sister publication to L&NW.