How Titan works
Your site Titan Cloud
┌──────────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ R700 reader + antennas │── TLS 8883 ──▶│ mqtt.titanrfid.com │
│ (connects out, never │ outbound │ (reader connections) │
│ accepts connections) │◀── commands ──│ │
└──────────────────────────┘ same link │ hub.titanrfid.com │
│ (web app + API) │
Your browser / your systems ─── HTTPS ───▶│ │
└──────────────────────────────┘
The reader opens one encrypted connection out to Titan and keeps it open. Tag reads travel up that connection, and Start/Stop commands from the hub travel back down it. Your browser and any system using the API talk to hub.titanrfid.com over ordinary HTTPS. Titan never opens a connection into your network.
The words Titan uses
Tag. A RAIN RFID tag, identified by its EPC (the hex code stored on it, such as E2801160600002084F1A3C21). Titan stores EPCs in uppercase. A tag appears in Titan the first time a reader sees it. You can also add data for an EPC before it has ever been read.
Field (column). A piece of data you attach to tags, such as sku, bin or owner. Fields have no fixed types. Titan stores numbers and true/false values natively, so they sort and filter properly, and keeps everything else as text. A value with a leading zero, like 00789, stays text because it's a code, not a quantity. One field can be marked as the name column, and its value is what the hub uses to label the tag.
Reader. An Impinj R700. It has four antenna ports. Each reader has its own certificate, which identifies it to Titan, so there are no shared passwords.
Antenna. One of a reader's four ports. You tell Titan which zone each antenna watches, and you can adjust its transmit power, which controls read range.
Zone. A place you care about: Receiving, Goods Out, Cage 2. Titan reports a tag's location as a zone. A tag read on an antenna that isn't mapped to a zone still counts as seen, but it has no location.
Asset. Something you track over time, like a tool, cart or returnable container. An asset has a name and an asset number, and it can be linked to a tag. Assets can be checked out to a person and checked back in, and Titan flags them as missing if they go unseen.
Alert. Something that needs attention, like a reader going offline or an asset going missing. Alerts open, can be acknowledged, and resolve on their own when the problem goes away.
From a read to a location
A reader reports the same tag many times a second while it's in range. Titan doesn't store every one of those reads as a separate record. It does this instead:
- Groups reads into a presence. Continuous reads of one tag on one antenna become a single "this tag is here" record that lasts until the tag stops being seen for a short time.
- Places the tag. The antenna's zone becomes the tag's location. If two zones see the tag at once, the stronger signal wins.
- Updates your views. Live Reads, Inventory, Assets and the Dashboard update straight away, and the change is published on the live event stream for any system that's listening.
Inventory counts a tag as present in a zone if it has been seen there in the last five minutes.
Who can do what
Everyone in your organisation signs in to the same account. Each person has one of three roles:
| Role | Can |
|---|---|
| Viewer | See everything. Change nothing. |
| Operator | Run the site: edit tag data, import CSVs, manage zones, map antennas, start and stop readers, check assets in and out, acknowledge alerts. |
| Admin | Everything an operator can do, plus add and remove users, create API keys, read the audit log and manage the subscription. |
API keys act with operator permissions. See Users, API keys and audit log.
Your subscription
Your plan sets how many readers you can run and which add-ons you have. If a subscription lapses, Titan does not stop tracking. Readers keep reading and history keeps building. What stops is your ability to change things, and if the account is suspended, to sign in at all, until it's sorted out. See Subscription.