Middlesex Community College is helping supply an electronic credentials system for security at the Fourth of July concert at the Esplanade this weekend. 

The school’s Radio Frequency Identification Lab and Program on Homeland Security developed the RFID system for the concert’s Unified Command Center, which is run by the Massachusetts State Police. The system is intended to allow quick access to the UCC for authorized security personnel. The UCC is located far away from the Hatch Shell, obviously, or RFID access would be the least of the Staties’ worries — they’d be stuck in a sea of fireworks-watching humanity.

From the print edition this week, staff writer Galen Moore talked to fireworks company MagicFire, which choreographs the display:

This July 4, like many before, fireworks technicians aboard barges anchored in the Charles River will sit over four firing panels — industrial computers built to run a fireworks display. (“It won’t run Microsoft Windows,” McKinley quipped.) If all goes well, the technicians have little to do during most of the show. Digital signals govern the timing of each barrage, transmitted from a riverside production booth in standard time code developed by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.