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Creating a Low-Cost RFID System with Business Central and Power Automate

Building a low-cost RFID scan-in and scan-out system using an ESP32 microcontroller, PN532 RFID reader, Power Automate, and Business Central tables. The system captures location-based scans for resource tracking, automatically handles edge cases like forgotten scan-outs, and stores results in two related tables for monitoring.

Open in Claude3579.md

post Aardvark Labs

Marcel Chabot · 2026-06-12 · 2,551 words · about 12 min

"From this design the possibilities really open up. We can associate the RFID Tags with resources and track labor, or machine use time."
Show the post hereRead on Aardvark Labs

Key points

  • The hardware is an ESP32 DEVKIT V1 with a PN532 RFID reader on the I2C bus, configured through a web portal with Wi-Fi, location and the Power Automate endpoint
  • Power Automate sits in the middle so the device avoids OAuth; its HTTP trigger parses the JSON array and sends each scan to a Business Central API page
  • The ARD_Scans table stores raw scans, and its OnInsert trigger creates or closes records in the ARD_ScanTracker table
  • If a tag scans in at a new location while still open somewhere else, the earlier record gets a scan-out time and is flagged as assumed for review
  • The device buffers up to 50 timestamped scans locally in case Wi-Fi is down

Quotes

  • “From this design the possibilities really open up. We can associate the RFID Tags with resources and track labor, or machine use time.” (Demonstrates extensibility potential for using the scan system beyond basic tracking, such as labor analytics and equipment utilization measurement)

AL objects mentioned

As named in the post. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

  • table “ARD_ScanTracker”
  • table “ARD_Scans”
  • page “ARD_ScanTracker”
  • page “ARD_RawScans”
  • page “ARD_ScanTrackerAPI”

Not found in BC28-30: table “ARD_ScanTracker”, table “ARD_Scans”, page “ARD_ScanTracker”, page “ARD_RawScans”, page “ARD_ScanTrackerAPI”.

Context

  • Features: RFID scanning, IoT integration, Power Automate connectivity, Automatic scan-out logic, Edge-case handling, Local scan buffering, JSON API communication, Configuration portal

Source: Aardvark Labs, community blog. Summary, key points and quotes are derived (CONTENT-NOTICE.md); read the original for the full text.