RFID has been hyped quite a bit ever since Walmart stated it would become standard with their products. RFID has also had a air of mystery and expense surrounding it. In a future article, I'll show how easy it is to write a .NET application that taps into an RFID reader that can scan passive tags. Total investment for doing what my article will show you that for under $100 if you buy several tags.

If you can't wait for my article and are curious to play around with RFID readers and tags, then RFID Toys by Amal Graafstra would be an interesting place to start. This book is not a technical reference manual or even a programmer's guide to doing RFID. Rather it is a book for taking relatively inexpensive RFID readers and tags and building projects with them. This is a great book for the hobbyist or person that simply has some extra time to play around.

RFID Toys shows you how to do several projects. These include opening your front door, opening a car door, logging into Windows XP, building a smart shelf, building a pet door, tracking employee, and RFID enabling a safe lock.

These projects require more than just programming. In many cases you have to get out the real tools to connect wires, hook up devices, and more. Even so, each chapter and each project walks you through the steps.

The book is interesting. Some of the projects are a bit hacked. Regardless, if you are interested in using RFID, this will also introduce you to a number of the cheap RFID readers and tools that are available today. While I won't end up building most of the projects in this book, I may end up building one of them. That alone makes the book interesting.

If you are interested in RFID and want to dabble with some fun projects, pick up this book. If you want to do a serious business application of RFID, then this probably isn't the right book to get.