Tracking of Sample Boxes Using Energy Harvesting

Abstract

In one embodiment, a freezer system has one or more shelves, each shelf has shelf electronics and can receive one or more racks, each rack has rack electronics and one or more cells for receiving one or more boxes of samples, each box has one or more RFID tags. Freezer electronics communicate with the outside world and with each set of shelf electronics. Each set of rack electronics communicates wirelessly with the corresponding set of shelf electronics and with the corresponding box RFID tags. Power for the rack electronics is derived from wireless signals from the shelf electronics. The freezer system can detect the presence of racks on shelves and boxes on racks to track the location and the orientation of each received box.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A system for storing samples, the system comprising:
 a cabinet (e.g.,  100 ) having a plurality of container locations (e.g.,  207 ), each container location configured to receive a container (e.g.,  206 ) configured to store one or more samples, wherein each container is configured with a container RFID tag (e.g.,  381 ); and   system electronics (e.g.,  201 ,  311 ,  312 ,  321 - 325 ) configured to support reading each container RFID tag to identify the container location of each container stored in the cabinet.