Impinj R700 Local Management

Part of: Devices — local-managed onboarding, configuration, and deployment for the Impinj R700.

When Tagnet can reach an Impinj R700 directly on your network, it can manage the reader instead of you configuring it by hand. Tagnet logs into the reader, deploys its own read configuration (antennas, power, filters, triggers), and can start, stop, reboot, and redeploy it on demand. This is local management, and it's the recommended setup whenever the reader and the Tagnet server (or a reachable network segment) can talk to each other directly.

If Tagnet can't reach the reader (it's on a separate network, behind a firewall, or managed through Impinj's own cloud tooling), use cloud management instead: you register the reader in Tagnet and manually point its webhook at Tagnet's ingest endpoint. See Impinj R700 Reader Setup for that flow. A cloud-managed reader can be converted to local management later without losing its history, so you aren't locked into your first choice.

Local vs. Cloud Management

Feature	Cloud Managed	Local Managed
Reader configuration (antennas, power, filters, triggers)	Set manually via the reader's own web UI	Deployed automatically from Tagnet
Start / stop / reboot	Manual via the reader's own web UI	Available from Tagnet's Reader control tab
Network requirement	None (reader posts outbound to Tagnet)	Tagnet must be able to reach the reader's IP address
Setup	Copy an ingest URL and credential into the reader's Webhook page	Tagnet logs in and deploys automatically

Adding a Locally-Managed R700

1. Navigate to Devices and open the Add menu, then choose Device.
2. Choose Local network.
3. Pick how to find the reader:
   • Discover: scans the network for readers (mDNS for an R700). Enable Advanced Discovery to also sweep an IP range and port if the reader doesn't answer. If it still doesn't appear, see Reader Discovery.
   • Manual Entry: set Reader type to Impinj R700 and enter the reader's address. The address field accepts a bare host, a host and port, or a full URL copied from the reader's own web page; an R700 defaults to HTTPS on port 443, which is what a bare host or IP resolves to unless you say otherwise.
4. Enter the reader's admin credentials and click Connect & Verify. The default login is root, with the password printed on the reader's label.
5. If your organization has more than one site scope, choose the Availability (site) that will own the reader before continuing; this decides which device types, groups, and locations the rest of the wizard offers. Single-site deployments skip this step.
6. Click Next through Reader Info, Configuration, and Review & Create.

Certificate rejected at step 4? If your organization has enabled Security / Reader certificate validation under Policies and this reader's TLS certificate is self-signed or otherwise untrusted, Connect & Verify fails with an explanation rather than a generic connection error. Either issue the reader a certificate your organization trusts, or turn the policy back off.

Tip: an Impinj R700 straight out of the box (or after a factory reset) forces a password change before it will accept any API calls. If Tagnet detects this, it offers to generate a secure password, push it to the reader, and store it as the reader's credential automatically, so you never have to invent or remember one yourself. Confirm the prompt and Tagnet retries the connection for you.

Until the reader is created, that password lives only in your browser session. Losing it means a factory reset to recover it, so Tagnet asks for confirmation before any action that would discard it: the Cancel button, going back to change how you're connecting, switching vendor, picking a different discovered reader, or navigating away from the wizard entirely. Finish creating the reader to store the password for good.

Reader Info

This step covers more than the hardware. Once connected, Tagnet reads the reader's model, antenna count, serial number, firmware version, MAC address, and hostname directly from the hardware; these fields are read-only in the wizard. Alongside them, you set the reader's name and description, its device type and device group, and, optionally, its scan event processing overrides and read point location, same as on the edit page. Everything here can be changed later.

If the reader has no regulatory operating region configured, which is how most R700s ship, Tagnet preselects FCC Part 15.247 (North America) when the reader lists it as a selectable option; change it if this reader operates elsewhere. By default the chosen region is applied during the first deploy, which reboots the reader if the region is changing. The next step, Configuration, offers to apply it right away instead, so you can review the reader's read configuration before the reader is even created.

Configuration

If Tagnet can reach the reader, it clones the reader's own read configuration here so you can review and adjust it before the reader is even created, in the same Reader Configuration Editor described below. Webhook settings aren't shown here: they're stored with the reader itself, so they only become available on the Edit page once it exists. This brings the R700 to parity with the Zebra FX, which has always offered configuration editing at this step.

Tagnet decides what to clone the same way a deploy does:

• If the reader already carries a tagnet preset, it's Tagnet's own and is cloned with no prompt.
• If the reader is factory-fresh with only the default preset, that's cloned with no prompt.
• If the reader carries other presets of its own, perhaps from bench testing or a prior Impinj-native setup, Tagnet asks which one to base the configuration on. See First Deploy and Preset Source Selection below for how to choose.

The reader's own presets are never modified; Tagnet always works from a clone. Whatever you save here is stored with the reader and applied to it on the first deploy as a preset named tagnet.

A factory-fresh reader has no region set yet, which turns its radio off and leaves nothing to clone. Since most readers ship this way, this step offers a Set the region now card: applying the region chosen on the Reader Info step restarts the reader (about a minute), after which Tagnet reads its configuration and this step becomes editable. This is optional. Skip it and the region is applied by the first deploy instead, exactly as before; that deploy then captures the configuration at the same time, and you edit it afterward from the reader's Edit page.

If the reader can't be reached, or you cancel the preset picker, this step falls back to the same "configured at deploy" note this section always showed: creation isn't blocked, and a Configure now (or Try again, if the read failed) button lets you retry without leaving the wizard.

Review & Create, and First Deploy

After you click Complete, the reader is created in Tagnet and a Deploy Now screen appears. Click it to run the initial deployment and let Tagnet verify that tag data flows all the way from the reader back into the scan-event pipeline. You can also skip this and deploy later from the reader's Reader control tab.

When the first deploy succeeds, the completion dialog says the reader is configured and offers the next step, since a reader's tag reads do nothing until a workflow says what should happen with them. Create a workflow for this reader opens the new-workflow form in the reader's scope with a From condition already naming it. Watch live reads opens Live Reads showing just this reader. Done goes to the reader's own page. A failed deploy shows the failure screen described below instead.

This first deploy uses the same background deployment runner as every later one: closing the wizard once it's running does not cancel it, and reopening the reader's Reader control tab afterward picks up its progress or its result. See Deploying Reader Configuration.

If the deploy fails, the failure screen is titled "Reader saved, not yet deployed" rather than a plain failure, and says so explicitly: the reader record, its credentials, and its stored configuration all exist in Tagnet already, only the push to the hardware didn't complete. Retry from the same screen, or leave it and deploy later from the reader's own Reader control tab once the underlying problem is resolved.

Converting a Cloud-Managed R700 to Local Management

If a cloud-managed R700 becomes reachable on your network (a VPN comes up, it moves to a routable subnet, and so on), an admin can hand its management over to Tagnet without recreating the device:

1. Open the reader's device page and go to the Connection info tab.
2. In the Local management section, click Convert to local management.
3. Enter the reader's IP address or hostname (pre-filled with the hostname registered at creation), port, and admin credentials. TLS and port 443 are the R700 defaults.
4. Click Verify & Convert.

Tagnet connects to the reader and confirms the hostname it reports matches the hostname already registered for this device, so a typo in the address can't accidentally attach the wrong physical reader. On success, the admin login is stored as the reader's outbound credential and the device switches to local management. History, ingest credentials, and any existing configuration are preserved. Nothing on the reader changes until you deploy afterward from the newly-available Reader control tab.

Note: conversion only runs in this direction today. There is no built-in path back to cloud management once a reader is converted.

First Deploy and Preset Source Selection

A full deploy to an R700 runs through several steps: authenticating, applying the operating region and RFID interface if needed, pointing the reader's webhook at Tagnet, writing the tagnet preset, starting it, and verifying tag data arrives. It typically takes about a minute, and if the reader is already scanning it's stopped during the deploy and restarted automatically, but only once the deploy finishes successfully. If an earlier step fails, the later steps that would restart the radio never run, so the reader can be left stopped. See Failed in Deploying Reader Configuration for what to do.

Tagnet keeps all of its reader configuration in a preset named tagnet on the device. If a configuration was already captured during creation (see Configuration above), the first deploy just writes that stored configuration to the reader; nothing below applies, since the question it describes was already answered in the wizard. Otherwise, the first time you deploy to a given reader, Tagnet decides how to seed that preset:

• If a tagnet preset already exists (from a previous deploy), it's reused and updated in place.
• If the reader is factory-fresh with only the default preset, Tagnet clones default with no prompt.
• If the reader already has other presets of its own, perhaps from bench testing or a prior Impinj-native setup, Tagnet asks which preset to base the tagnet preset on. Pick the one the reader normally runs to keep its tuned antenna and power settings, or the factory default for a clean start. The source preset is cloned, never modified, and this choice is only made once: every later deploy rebases on the resulting tagnet preset.

Reader Configuration Editor

Open the reader's Edit page and expand the Reader configuration section to change what gets deployed. This is the same editor used by the create wizard's Configuration step, minus webhook settings, which only appear here since they depend on the reader already existing. Unlike Zebra FX readers, an R700's read settings (RF mode, session, filters, and so on) apply to every enabled antenna as one shared configuration; only power level and antenna name are set per port.

Antennas and Power

Each antenna row has an enable toggle, an optional name, and a power slider from 10 to 33 dBm in 0.25 dBm steps. A bulk control at the top sets every enabled antenna to the same power level at once. At least one antenna must stay enabled.

Important: power above +30 dBm needs PoE+ or DC power. If any enabled antenna is set above 30 dBm and the reader hasn't confirmed it's receiving 802.3at (PoE+) or DC power, Tagnet shows a warning on the affected sliders. Standard 802.3af PoE, and midspan injectors that don't negotiate a power budget over LLDP, cap out below what's needed to run the radio at full power on all antennas. If you deploy at this level without adequate power, the reader will refuse to start the preset. Verify the injector or switch port supplies PoE+, or that the reader is powered through its DC jack, before deploying above +30 dBm.

Read Settings

Setting	Description
RF mode	The radio's link profile. AutoSet Dense Reader Deep Scan is Impinj's general-purpose recommendation and Tagnet's default; other named modes trade off throughput against interference tolerance.
Session	Gen2 session flag (0 to 3); higher sessions hold a tag's inventoried state longer, which matters in multi-reader environments.
Search mode	How the reader cycles through the Gen2 inventory rounds (dual target, single target, and variants).
Estimated tag population	The number of tags the reader should expect in an antenna's field of view; used to tune the inventory algorithm.
RSSI filter	A single slider running from Off through the reader's cutoff range, -80 to -30 dBm. Reads weaker than the cutoff are discarded on the reader before it reports them. The far-left position is Off, which removes the filter rather than setting a cutoff at the floor. -80 dBm filters the least, -30 dBm filters the most. The bar beside the slider shows the split: hatched is the part of the range being discarded, solid is what still gets reported.
Report TID (FastID)	Reads each tag's TID alongside its EPC. Recommended: Tagnet uses the TID to reject blank or misprogrammed tags. Slightly reduces throughput.
Dynamic population estimation	Lets the reader refine its population estimate from previous inventory rounds instead of using a fixed value.

Tag Filters

Up to five Gen2 select filters can be added, each matching a memory bank (EPC, TID, or User), a bit offset, and a hex mask, with separate include/exclude/do-nothing actions for matching and non-matching tags. Filter verification controls whether the reader double-checks a tag against the filter on-chip (active) or trusts the inventory round (passive, the default).

Repeat-Read Suppression

Controls how often the reader re-reports a tag it's already seen: a suppression interval in seconds (0 reports every read) and the size of the per-antenna tag cache used to track recently-seen tags. This is a reader-side dedup layer; Tagnet's own cooldown still applies on top of whatever the reader sends.

A suppression interval of 0 (also the reader's own default) reports every read of every tag. Per-read reports carry phase, which motion detection uses, and they are fine where tags pass through in bursts, such as a portal or a triggered read. In a read zone that sees tags constantly, every read of every resting tag is stored: a busy reader can post about 200 reads a second, roughly 1 GB of database an hour, until retention removes the old reads.

The session and search mode decide how often a resting tag answers. Session 0 or 1, or a dual-target search mode, reads a tag sitting in front of the antenna round after round. Session 2 or 3 with a single-target search mode reads it once and keeps it quiet while it stays in the field, which cuts the repeats but also stops a stationary tag from reporting again until it leaves.

Tagnet shows a warning in the configuration editor and on the reader's detail page when the interval is 0. If the reader does not need motion detection, set an interval of 1 second or more.

Inventory Triggers

By default the preset runs continuously once started. You can instead arm it with a start trigger (a GPI transition, or a periodic schedule) and a stop trigger (a GPI transition, or a fixed duration). A start trigger with no stop trigger runs indefinitely once fired; for "read while the door is open" scenarios, pair the start with the opposite GPI transition or a duration. The reader accepts a start trigger with no stop trigger, so Tagnet doesn't block saving one, but it does ask you to confirm the choice: a Check this setting prompt appears when you save, since it's very likely not what was intended.

Webhook Settings

The Verify server TLS certificate switch controls whether the reader validates Tagnet's TLS certificate before delivering tag events to the ingest endpoint. It is off by default: on-prem Tagnet servers commonly run on a self-signed certificate, which the reader would reject, and a rejected certificate silently stops all event delivery. Turn it on only when the Tagnet server presents a certificate the reader can validate (for example, one issued by a public or internal certificate authority). Like the rest of the reader configuration, the change applies on the next deploy.

Deploy-to-Apply

Saving changes on the Edit page does not push them to the reader by itself. Click Update and Tagnet asks whether to deploy the change now or later; accepting runs the deploy in the background and returns you to wherever you came from, so you don't have to wait on it. This mirrors how Zebra FX local readers work: editing is separate from deploying, so you can make several changes and apply them together. See Deploying Reader Configuration for the full workflow, including what the Devices list and this reader's own page show while a deploy is pending, running, or has failed.

The Overview tab's Reader configuration card always shows a read-only view of the configuration currently saved in Tagnet (antennas and power, read settings, filters, suppression, and triggers), whether or not it has been deployed yet. If the stored configuration can't be parsed, redeploying the reader reseeds it. If the reader hasn't been deployed at all yet, this card explains that its first configuration is captured from the reader itself on the first deploy.

Antenna Read-Recency and GPI/GPO Cards

The device's Overview tab shows status cards summarizing reader activity at a glance. Each card links to the tab that explains it.

Antenna Reads

The R700's API has no efficient way to report which antenna ports are physically connected, so instead of a connected/disconnected indicator (as shown for Zebra FX readers), the R700's antenna card shows read recency per port: how recently Tagnet has actually ingested a tag read from that antenna, bucketed hourly. A port fades from solid green (read within the last hour) through lighter shades (read within 6 hours, 24 hours, or the last week) to a gray outline once nothing has come from it in over a week.

Keep in mind two consequences of this approach: a port that's physically connected but hasn't seen a tag yet still shows as gray, and a port that was reading tags and then gets unplugged mid-run keeps showing as recently-read until the reader next transitions to idle.

GPI / GPO

When the reader reports GPI (input) or GPO (output) pin state through its telemetry, the antenna card shows each port's current level on a second line: green for HIGH, amber for LOW. This is useful for confirming a photo eye or light stack is wired correctly before relying on it as a start or stop trigger.

Reader Control Operations

The Reader control tab (also reachable directly from the row actions menu for local readers) exposes:

Operation	What it does
Start / Stop	Starts or stops the tagnet preset without redeploying configuration
Pause delivery / Resume delivery	Turns the reader's event webhook off or on, so it stops or starts posting to Tagnet
Deploy	Pushes the full configuration (region, RFID interface, webhook, and the tagnet preset) to the reader, then starts it. Runs in the background; only one deploy can run per reader at a time
Reboot	Restarts the reader
Refresh status	Re-syncs Tagnet's view of the reader's operational status without changing anything on the hardware

Pausing Event Delivery

Stop and Pause delivery are different controls, and the reader treats them independently.

Stop halts the tagnet preset: the radio stops reading tags. It does not stop the event webhook, which keeps sending a heartbeat roughly every second for as long as the reader is powered and can reach Tagnet. So a stopped reader is still talking.

Pause delivery turns the webhook off at the reader. Nothing is sent to Tagnet, including heartbeats, until you resume it. The reader's configuration is untouched and resuming is immediate, so this is the control to use when you want a reader to go quiet without changing anything else: staging a reader before a site goes live, or silencing one while you troubleshoot something else.

While delivery is paused the Reader control tab shows a warning, because a paused reader looks entirely healthy from the outside and reports normally on its own web UI.

A few things worth knowing:

• Pausing survives a Deploy. The deploy rebuilds the whole webhook configuration but honours the paused state, so it will not quietly start delivering again.
• If you press Start while delivery is paused, Tagnet asks first, and offers to start and resume delivery together. Otherwise the reader would scan normally while nothing arrived in Tagnet, which is hard to tell apart from a broken reader.
• Deactivating the device pauses delivery for you, and also stops the preset. See Activating and Deactivating Devices.
• If the reader is unreachable when you pause it, Tagnet saves the setting and applies it on the reader's next deploy. Anything the reader sends in the meantime is discarded rather than stored.
• This is a locally-managed capability. Tagnet cannot reach a cloud-managed R700's webhook, so those readers rely on Tagnet discarding their data instead.

Troubleshooting

Deploy fails during Region Configuration: the selected operating region isn't valid for this reader's hardware or firmware. Re-open the reader's Edit page and confirm the region against the reader's own web UI.

Preset deploy is rejected for insufficient power: an enabled antenna is set above +30 dBm without confirmed PoE+ or DC power. Lower the power, or fix the reader's power source, then redeploy. See Antennas and Power above.

Reader configuration shows "could not be parsed": the stored preset JSON is malformed, usually from an interrupted deploy. Redeploy the reader to reseed it from a clean state.

Antenna shows no reads even though it's cabled: the read-recency card only lights up once Tagnet has ingested at least one tag read from that port. Present a tag within range and confirm the port isn't disabled in the Reader configuration section.

Deploy fails at Connection Verification with a network error: the reader cannot deliver events to Tagnet's ingest endpoint. Besides the network path itself, check the Verify server TLS certificate setting: if it's enabled and Tagnet is running on a self-signed certificate, the reader rejects the connection. Disable the setting and redeploy, or install a certificate the reader can validate. See Webhook Settings above.

The reader keeps misbehaving and you need support's help: an administrator can run Collect debug bundle from the reader's Reader control tab to gather the R700's debug bundle and any watchdog bundle along with Tagnet's own logs for the reader. See Collecting a Reader Debug Bundle.

"The reader's TLS certificate was refused": your organization has enabled the Security / Reader certificate validation policy, and this reader's certificate is self-signed or otherwise doesn't validate. This can surface during Connect & Verify, a redeploy, or any other operation that opens a fresh connection to the reader. Either issue the reader a certificate your organization trusts, or turn the policy off if your fleet is running on the self-signed certificates readers ship with by default.