A system providing self-service access to locked merchandise comprising: (a) providing a fixture that restricts access to the locked merchandise, wherein the fixture can automatically lock or unlock, allowing or restricting access to the locked merchandise; (b) providing a means of uniquely identifying an individual attempting to access the merchandise; (c) measuring a set of behaviors of the individual during any time the fixture is an open mode; (d) assessing whether the set of behaviors of the individual are suspicious or not relative to a set of suspicious event thresholds; (e) storing the individual and their set of behaviors as accessible records in at least one database; and (f) providing an algorithm which determines future access privileges of the individual to the enclosure based on a set of variables.

The retail cigarette inventory management system forms a containment structure that stores one or more packs of smoking materials. The retail cigarette inventory management system counts the number of individual packs contained in the one or more packs of smoking materials. The retail cigarette inventory management system visibly displays the counted number of individual packs of the one or more packs of smoking materials contained in the retail cigarette inventory management system. The retail cigarette inventory management system visibly displays the number of individual packs contained in the one or more packs of smoking materials.

Image data depicting a 2D machine-readable code is up-sampled and compressed with a lossy compression process before being sent from a client device to a remote server for code reading. The remote server decompresses the sent information, extracts a payload from the machine-readable code, and causes result information to be sent back to the client device for display or other action. The up-sampling and compression operations performed on the client device can employ software instructions that are downloaded to, and executed by, browser software on the client device. Many other features and arrangements are also detailed.

The Tag Element System allows users to create, upload, and share virtual content in the physical world utilizing the Tag Element System platform, “Enhanced Tag Elements”, and a smart device such as a smartphone or tablet. Any user can record a video or create other content and attach it to an Enhanced Tag Element simply by scanning or otherwise interacting with it with their smart device. The system provides a user interface to enable a user to create and upload new content upload previously stored content to the Tag Element System. Once content is uploaded, the user can share the Enhanced Tag Element with another user to allow that user to access, modify, and/or interact with the content.

A device configured to identify a first digital document in a digital document repository, to identify a first graphical code that represents the first digital document, and to send the first graphical code to an approved user device. The device is further configured to obtain a second graphical code that represents a public encryption key for the organization and to extract the public encryption key for an organization from the second graphical code. The device is further configured to obtain a third graphical code from the approved user device. The third graphical code represents a second digital document comprising data and a digital signature that was signed using a private encryption key for the organization. The device is further configured to determine the third graphical code passes validation using the public encryption key for the organization and to store the second digital document in a digital document repository.

A device configured to obtain a first graphical code that represents a public encryption key for an organization and to extract the public encryption key for the organization from the first graphical code. The device is further configured to obtain a second graphical code that represents a digital document comprising data and a digital signature that was signed using a private encryption key for the organization. The device is further configured to extract the digital document from the second graphical code and to validate the second graphical code using the public encryption key for the organization. The device is further configured to determine the second graphical code passes validation using the public encryption key for the organization and to store the digital document in a digital document repository.

A method for exchange of equipment performance data includes the steps of: obtaining performance data of a communicatively-insulated device; converting the performance data into a scannable code; capturing an image of the scannable code; decoding the scannable code using a communicatively-enabled device to extract an address string encoded in the scannable code, the address string comprising an address of a remote server and the performance data; initiating, by the communicatively-enabled device, a communications link with the remote server using the address string thereby to provide the performance data to the remote server; performing, by the remote server, analytics on the performance data; and sending historic device performance data and/or analytical results to a remote computing device and/or sending a link to the historic device performance data and/or analytical results to the remote computing device; wherein the communicatively-insulated device is packaging equipment and wherein obtaining the performance data comprises: running a calibration phantom through the packaging equipment; scanning the calibration phantom with a calibration unit; and using the calibration unit to generate a system status report identifying one or more operational parameters of the packaging equipment.

Security devices having chaosmetric artifacts from fractal patterns are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a security device, having a physical surface having formed thereon a composite pattern. The composite pattern can created from created from joining of an imprint of a first base pattern and an imprint of a second base pattern. The first base pattern can be created from a first basic building block. In one embodiment, the first base pattern is a fractal pattern based on the first basic building block which forms chaosmetric artifacts in the physical surface upon printing.

In an example implementation, a smart cart system may include a cart including a frame and an item holder supported by the frame and configured to transition between an open position and a storage position that is more compact than the open position. The smart cart system may include a motivator configured to provide a motive force to the cart, a power source coupled with the motivator, and a charging interface attached to the frame of the cart and that interacts with a cart charging system of a cart storage rack to charge the power source. The smart cart system may also include a user interface device, a computing device, and a smart cart controller operable on the computing device to receive information describing an attribute of an item and provide information describing the attribute of the item for presentation by the user interface device.

The present invention provides improved spectral signature strategies for use in a wide range of product and service applications. The present invention encodes spectral signature features into one or more optical brightener compounds and/or one or more infrared absorbing compounds. Equipment is modified with appropriate ultraviolet/violet or infrared LED illumination sources and corresponding detectors, optionally optical filters, and optionally mask elements, in order to read the spectral responses. These features desirably are used in combination with one or more other luminescent taggant compounds.