Build This Raspberry Pi RFID System to Track the Clothes in Your Closet

Without going to check, do you know what clothes are currently in your closet? You might have an idea of what you’ve worn recently, but you probably don’t know what’s actually still clean. If that’s information you’d like to have handy, you can follow this tutorial to build your own RFID tracking system for your closet.

Dar_sissau, a student at Belgium’s Howest Kortrijk college, designed the system after struggling to remember what was clean when packing a suitcase. As a New Media and Communication Technology major, Dar_sissau’s first thought was to use technology to solve the problem. The system would need to track many articles of clothing, so they decided on RFID, because packs of RFID tags are plentiful and inexpensive.

Using Dar_sissau’s RFID Based Wardrobe Management System is as simple as it can be: just scan an item’s RFID tag when you take it out of the closet, and then scan it again when you put it back. The RFID reader is connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, which hosts a MySQL database. When it reads an RFID tag, it checks that database to see if the tag is marked as in or out, and then simply flips the value. Whenever you want to see what’s in your closet, you can just SSH into your Raspberry Pi and check the database!