Having Trouble Keeping Track Of Your Miniatures?
September 18, 2014 by deltagamegirl22
So, you are at a tournament and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of miniatures and models all out in the open, how do you keep track of what is yours? If you are like me, you can tell by some markings on the base as I use a paint marker on the underside to identify mine. Well, now I have found someone out of Australia who has started a campaign on Kickstarter to offer chips for your minis.
Not actual chip
Yes, microchips just like you would your dog or cat to identify them if they ever got lost. It is a novel idea, but I am not sure how well received it would be by the general public and I still have several question about how this would work, unfortunately there is not much information on the Kickstarter page. My biggest question is how do you program the chip in the first place? According to the campaign page you can use your cellphone NFC reader to scan the mini and read the chip, but does not say how it's programmed. With all the talk of technology being incorporated into our games I thought this was an interesting subject for one to consider. The cost of chipping your minis could be high, so do you just chip the bigger more costly models? We here at Beasts of War are always trying to bring you guys new and innovative ideas to enhance your gaming.
What do you think? Is your current system working for you or do you need to go high tech?
It might work similarly to the chips you can get in your pets to identify them if they ever get lost and don’t have or loose their collar. The vet waves a wand over the animals neck and some data pops up on the screen that they can use to contact the registered owner.
They’re only offering “preprogrammed” chips so I’m assuming you fill out a form for each chip you buy indicating what information you want encoded on it. I’d classify that as not quite ready for prime time, personally. What if I move? I have to order all new chips to put my new personal details on them?
Hmm, this one is kind of a waste of money or even needing to exist. As mentioned above, you can mark the bases or you could stick NFC tags under the minis. They do the same thing, for cheaper and you can program them yourself.
Business advice #1: find a need and fill it.
Problem is that with so many people, so many companies, most needs are covered.
So the “new” needs to fill get more and more specialized.
This would be an example of that. Certainly not for everybody, but I do see a certain appeal to this idea.
Just dissmissing it by saying “you can just do this, or just do that instead” is the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach.
There is a lot to worry about with this KS project, a distinct lack of information as to what technology he’s using and what value his project is adding – beyond supplying standard chips available off the shelf for you to glue to your bases and read with a standard app. Dog tagging with chips only works because there’s a centralised registration scheme,= for the IDs. the chips themselves don’t hold more than a unique id (effectively giving your dog a serial number). NFC or RFID is suitable here. Some retailers use RFID for scanning lots of chips attached to… Read more »
If you want to know how to buy and encode your own NFC chips (~$1.30 / £1 / €1.10 each) then you can with most NFC enabled phones. You don’t need any special equipment.
http://rapidnfc.com/encoding_nfc_tags is but one company that sells these.
The only question I have about this is how would this work outside of a small group of people. So you ID tag your minis, I find it at the Con while packing up a gaming table. Will I know to scan it right away, will I be able to even see the chip, what software is required to read the chip? How hard is it going to be to read the chip versus dropping it off at the lost & found or the gamemasters/Con reg table. Seems a lot of work/expense for something that can be done a lot… Read more »