I was first inspired by this concept when reading the book Makers. Have you ever read the book “Makers” by Corey Doctorow?

He had a very clever solution which I wanted to try; bought the parts but lacked the motivation. Because the person I do projects with is very detail oriented and organizes things very well.

But the concept was you put an RFID on every physical item you want to index. Then you put a reader in a collection of bins. Then you just randomly put the items in the bins without thinking about how its organized.

Then you can write software to be able to do a search of your physical items that have the RFID (or even the newer low power Bluetooth would work too, didn’t exist at the time of writing the book).

So when doing a physical search, the idea is that it lights up the container its in, then you can go directly tot that container and obtain the physical item without needing to do any organization.

I have other ideas; but that one is the first one that comes to mind, I highly recommend the book; and all his books, I’m a big fan. I never really got into his site Boing Boing but his writing is stellar.

If you can’t afford it, or can’t find it; let me know and I will post the audio book for you or the EPUB. Whichever you prefer.

With newer Bluetooth protocols, more complex versions of this is definitely possible.