Sony Puppy FIU 900 - Fingerprint Scanner

The Sony Puppy FIU-900 is a fingerprint scanner reader from sony which is currently a discontinued product that debuted in 2003, following the range of FIU fingerprint readers. It is the sucessor of the 710 and the 810 and was the last in its range before the discontinuation of the product. There are two main styles of fingerprint recognition used in electronic products. There are optical and capacitance. Optical scanners work by scanning an image of the finger once it is pressed onto the reader and takes note of the change in brightness of the ridges on a fingerprint. Capacitance scanners do not take an image, instead they are made up of a number of compact cells which give a different voltage for ridges when they press into the cells. This is the way in which the FIU-900 works.

The Scanner must be Small and Portable

The predecessors of the FIU-900 were all created well for the use in which they intended, although they all lacked the ability to be transported easily. This was a major advantage in the market for companies who may have required personal security information at a number of different workstations. A user could take their data with them comfortably in a wallet or pocket and use the device to access their information simply by plugging it into the reader on another machine.
At the time of release, fingerprint readers were still quite expensive, averaging at around $80 - $90, including some of the FIU range (the previous readers were approxiamately $84.99). This design principle that was added to the scanner meant that although the device itself was small, the price of the device increased dramatically, with the average scanner selling at £157.99. Having such a major price tag on the device meant that the demand of the product would decrease. It would be useful to have the smaller size, although with the price being around twice the amount of the average scanners, people would have been put off.
Sony did not sacrifice any the quality of their product when they upgraded to the FIU-900. The capacitance scanner still scanned images at 80 x 80 micrometer pixel size, although the actual size of the image was smaller than before at 128x128 compared to the previous 128x192. This would have just changed how much of the finger was scanned rather than the quality of the scan. In fact, the memory capacity of the 900 was double that of the 710 and the power consumption was dramatically decreased. These additions would have all increased the price of the components and technology used in the product, which is why we can see the raised market price.

The Scanner must Satisfy User's Needs

So far as scanning, the technology in sony's scanners was prooved in their predecessors and this would continue into the FIU-900. The device was portable as decribed, although there was a major downfall with the design that would have deterred a prospective buyer for the product. The device would only run with Sony's own brand of memory reader which was designed for this device. This meant that although the device was portable, in order to take advantage of this, a user would need to have purchased a number of scanners, which would mean a greater expense. Sony had planned on making the device readable on any memory reader in the future, although the product was discontinued before this action was taken. The reader was therefore not complient with memory reader standards, and was low quality in this aspect.
For the price paid at the time, the device was definitely not a great investment compared to other scanners on the market. The main advantage of this device was to transfer data easily and securely between readers, and if this meant even more money had to be spent, cheaper options were usually beneficial.

Discontinuation

The product was discontinued and soon replaced by the Microvault range of fingerprint scanners. These scanners were much more beneficial to user's needs and clearly seem to address the design faults present in the FIU series. Microvault is Sony's range of usb fingerprint scanners, which meant that they were portable, contained the high quality technology of Sony's capacitance scanners, they were small and they complied to the USB standard of interconnection.

Today, the leading range of scanners appears to be under the company of microsoft, who have been able to create scanners integrated into mice and keyboards at a very low convienient price. Biometrics, though, are still undergoing development to work correctly and securely. As seen in 2006, microsoft were under fire when one of their fingerprint scanners was hacked into. As most scanners hold their information on the device itself, if an attacker was to gain access to information on the device, it is a serious concern that they can steal a fingerprint. Unlike passwords, fingerprints can't be changed and therefore this is still a major factor for most biometric devices.

Works Cited

Sony Electronics Inc. (2003, January). FIU-900. Retrieved April 30, 2009, from Sony: http://bssc.sel.sony.com/news/puppy/files/FIU900sm.pdf

Sony Electronics Inc. (2001). FIU-700 Fingerprint Identification Unit. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from Sony: http://bssc.sel.sony.com/news/puppy/files/FIU710_final.pdf

Harris, T. (n.d.). How Fingerprint Scanners Work. Retrieved April 30, 2009, from HowStuffWorks: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/fingerprint-scanner.htm

McMillan, R. (2006, March 6). Researcher Hacks Microsoft Fingerprint Reader. Retrieved april 30, 2009, from PCWorld: http://www.pcworld.com/article/124978/researcher_hacks_microsoft_fingerprint_reader.html

Super Warehouse. (1998-2009). Sony Biometric Scanners - Discontinued. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from Super Warehouse: http://www.superwarehouse.com/Sony_Biometric_Scanners/b/250/c/2640/d

Amazon Inc. (1996-2009). Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer with Fingerprint Reader. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Wireless-IntelliMouse-Explorer-Fingerprint/dp/B0002IHP44/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1241364695&sr=1-1