"Collaborative production is simple: no one person can take credit for what gets created, and the project could not come into being without the participation of many"
Some of the key new features between RiderScan I and RiderScan II is that I replaced the Adafruit Wave Shield with an Emic2 Text-To-Speech module – which is a Fantastic addition to the Adafruit product line, as now I can generate all the voice I need without have to pre-generate all the sound files and calling them one by one. I also added the new Adafruit MAX98306 Class D audio amplifier to the rig, which is another Great addition as i was using the ancient, Huge Vellum amplifiers in RiderScan I, and these are so small I was able to join them onto the main proto shield! This reduced the height of the rig by loosing the Wave shield (which is a big deal), and got further compactness and greater voice functionality – so RiderScan II should be a Much more capable system.
The PN532 is the most popular NFC chip, and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and ‘act’ like a NFC tag. If you want to do any sort of embedded NFC work, this is the chip you’ll want to use!
NFC (Near Field Communications) is a way for two devices very close to each other to communicate. Sort of like a very short range bluetooth that doesn’t require authentication. It is an extension of RFID, so anything you can do with RFID you can do with NFC. You can do more stuff with NFC as well, such as communicate bi-directionally with cell phones
Because it can read and write tags, you can always just use this for RFID-tag projects. We carry a few different tags that work great with this chip. It can also work with any other NFC/RFID Type 1 thru 4 tag (and of course all the other NXP MiFare type tags)
While it just looks like 13.56MHz RFID — using Mifare or similar low cost tags … it’s nice to see technology making inroads in my own backyard. I’ve always appreciated some legislation in Europe that forces food retailers to publish comparable prices on the tags of every product. (All products need to have the price per KG or per liter listed on the in-store tickets so you can easily compare. The difference with some products can be shocking.) Something like NFC/RFID allows you to also see the nutritional information more easily, etc., which can only be a good thing.
Interested in working with NFC or RFID yourself? Grab our NFC breakout or NFC shield and get communicating with the world around you as well!
NEW PRODUCT – Stainless Steel RFID Blocking Wallet. A reinterpretation of the average wallet for men who do not settle for the everyday but delight in the exrta-ordinary. This is Stewart/Stand’s original bill fold design with crossing card slots. We picked one of these up a few years ago and still carry it every day, its incredibly rugged and good looking!
Capacity: 6 credit card slots, 2 extra slots, 1 billfold; Materials: Woven Stainless Steel Cloth, Black Leather; Dimensions: 4.438 x 3.375 x 0.188″
Stewart/Stand stainless steel wallets block unauthorized transmission from RFID enabled credit cards & IDs. Learn more here.
Made with 85%+ post consumer recycled stainless steel.
Normal wear and tear will cause the wallet to take on a natural patina over time.
On a new television game show known as Oh Sit!, contestants must overcome a variety of obstacles (as well as each other) in an extreme version of the old children’s game, musical chairs. Each chair has a specific cash prize associated with it, so it was vital for the producers to be able to track which contestants sat in which chairs. Which technology did they choose? Bing, bing, bing—radio frequency identification. Correct!
The show features an obstacle course encircling a set of chairs, with music playing in the background. Once the music stops, contestants must scramble for a seat, and the person left standing is then eliminated. In addition, a different cash value is associated with each chair, with the values hidden from players. The contestant sitting in the chair of least value is booted off the show as well.
Interesting read on the challenges of indoor tracking.
Adafruit customer Uberhound posted his awesome RFID project on the Adafruit forums.
Using Adafruit’s RFID and WAV shields, I’ve just finished installing a system to announce frequent visitors by their unique theme song.
For example, my arrival is announced by the theme song to Dr. Who.
Though the system requires visitors to have a Mifare card on them (their employer ID is usually fine), I’m hoping the new generation of NFC phones will work just as well.
We’ve taken our popular Adafruit PN532 breakout board and turned it into a shield – the perfect tool for any 13.56MHz RFID or NFC application. The Adafruit NFC shield uses the PN532 chip-set (the most popular NFC chip on the market) and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and ‘act’ like a NFC tag. If you want to do any sort of embedded NFC work, this is the chip you’ll want to use!
One of the big advantages of Linux is that it includes a large number of stacks that have been developed by the open source community, and you get to take advantage of all that hard work simply by using or installing the right library.
NFC is no exception here, with libnfc having been around for a quite some time – in fact, it’s the original reason the NFC Breakout was developed!
To get libnfc playing well with your Pi and your Adafruit NFC breakout you’ll need to make some minor modification to your vanilla Wheezy distribution, and one small change to the latest NFC code (1.6.0-rc1 as of this writing), but it’s pretty painless, and this tutorial will show you everything you need to do to start writing your own NFC-enabled apps on the Pi!
Learn to make a speaking, card-reading toy! The Babel Fish helps you learn to say words and phrases on RFID flash cards by reading the card and playing an associated sound file loaded on an SD card inside. This project is very straightforward and could make a great jumping-off point for your own awesome RFID and Wave Shield project! Video on YouTube (subscribe to our channel!) and Vimeo. Head over to the Adafruit Learning System for the complete guide.
When I was a kid we played a game called Mastermind. Basically one person makes up a code using colored plastic pegs and the other person tries to guess the code or pattern in a limited number of turns by placing colored pegs on the board and learning if any of his or her guesses are correct.
I thought to try and make an electronic version using RFID tags instead of colored plastic pieces.
Making the game as I have in the drawing would need at least an Arduino Mega because of the 4 RGB LEDS. I wonder if there is a way to multiplex, charlipex or somehow get the RGB LEDS to use less pins? (You need GND plus 3 PWM pins for each one)
Using an Arduino, an Adafruit NFC / RFID shield and an Adafruit proto shield. System recognizes each of 3 tags presented and plays a different tone and light up a different LED for each one.
Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID Controller Shield for Arduino + Extras – We’ve taken our popular Adafruit PN532 breakout board and turned it into a shield – the perfect tool for any 13.56MHz RFID or NFC application. The Adafruit NFC shield uses the PN532 chip-set (the most popular NFC chip on the market) and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and ‘act’ like a NFC tag. If you want to do any sort of embedded NFC work, this is the chip you’ll want to use!
NFC (Near Field Communications) is a way for two devices very close to each other to communicate. Sort of like a very short range bluetooth that doesn’t require authentication. It is an extension of RFID, so anything you can do with RFID you can do with NFC. You can do more stuff with NFC as well, such as communicate bi-directionally with cell phones
Because it can read and write tags, you can always just use this for RFID-tag projects. We carry a few different tags that work great with this chip. It can also work with any other NFC/RFID Type 1 thru 4 tag (and of course all the other NXP MiFare type tags)
The Adafruit shield was designed by RF engineers using the best test equipment to create a layout and antenna with 10cm (4 inch) range, the maximum range possible using the 13.56MHz technology. You can easily attach the shield behind a plastic plate with standoffs and still read cards through a (non-metal) barrier.
This shield is designed to use I2C or SPI communication protocols. I2C is the default, as it uses fewer pins: analog 4 and 5 are used for I2C (of course you can still connect other I2C devices to the bus). Digital #2 is used for “interrupt” notification. This means you don’t have to sit there and ‘poll’ the chip to ask if a target tag has been found, the pin will pull low when a card, phone, etc is within range. You can adjust which pin is used if you need to keep digital #2 for something else. It is also easy to change the shield over to SPI where you can use any 4 digital pins by shorting two solder jumpers on the top of the PCB. Compatible with any “classic” Arduino – NG, Diecimilla, Duemilanove, UNO – as well as Mega R3 or later. For using the I2C interface with Mega R2 or earlier, two wires must be soldered as the I2C pins are in a different location on earlier Megas.
I did a very similar thing with the keycard to my workplace a while ago. It read fine even through the metal of the stock iPhone back. However, though the back seemed to close fine on the pieces of the keycard, it caused the glass to bow slightly and the glass eventually broke when the phone suffered a light impact. I’m going to try again with a custom wound antenna and Kapton tape.
We found that when placed under one of our replacement iPhone backs, the tag didn’t read, so we fiddled with tape and paper until there was enough air space between the metallic bulk of the phone and the RFID antenna.
One post-it note and four layers of packing tape later, the tag scans just fine from within the back of the iPhone, even with 4G and wifi turned on.
NEW PRODUCT – RFID MiFare S50 Card Reader – PS/2 Interface. For projects where you just want to use RFID MiFare tags or cards, this nicely packaged RFID reader may be more desirable than our RFID/NFC shield or breakout. The nice thing about this reader is that its packaged in plastic, has an LED and buzzer to indicate when a card is read, and spits out the 4-byte card ID over the PS/2 cable as if it were a keyboard. It cannot read or write the contents of the card, its only good for reading the permanent 4-byte ID burned into each MiFare classic 13.56 MHz tag.
Nearly all microcontrollers have existing PS/2 keyboard examples that would work fine with this reader.
For Ardiuno users, we tried out PJRC’s PS2_Keyboard library with great success – just check the ‘simple text’ example for which pins you can connect to on your ‘duino (on an Uno we used digital pins 2 and 3). We suggest our PS/2 adapter cable to make the wiring easy. Bring any of our MiFare tags close to the reader top and watch as the ID number is ‘typed’ out into the serial monitor. The ID number is typed out in base 10 (that is, normal decimal)
Please remember this reader cannot read or write the EEPROM contents of the card, its only good for reading the permanent 4-byte ID burned into each MiFare tag. This means its good for identifying one card from another, but not for storing data onto the cards. Its also not guaranteed to work with anything other than classic MiFare S50 tags. If you want to read/write to the EEPROM inside the tag, or use other kinds of 13.56 MHz tags check out our PN532 based breakout and shield!
NEW PRODUCT – MiFare Classic (13.56MHz RFID/NFC) Bracelet [1KB]. This is a blank MiFare Classic silicone bracelet – often used for parties/events or identification but also found in other systems where a small proximity card is desired. The bracelet contains a NXP S50 chip and an antenna, and is passively powered by the reader/writer when placed a couple inches away
These can be read by almost any 13.56MHz RFID/NFC reader but make sure it can handle MiFare cards as there are a few other encoding standards (like FeLica) They are tested and work greats with both our PN532 NFC/RFID breakout board and Adafruit NFC/RFID Shield for Arduino!
These chips can be written to & store up to 1 KB of data in writable EEPROM divided into banks, and can handle over 100,000 re-writes. You can use our PN532 NFC/RFID breakout board or Adafruit NFC/RFID Shield for Arduino to read and write data to the EEPROM inside the tag. There is also a permanent 4-byte ID burned into the chip that you can use to identify one tag from another – the ID number cannot be changed.
Dhani Sutanto dissolved away the plastic of his Oyster Card (London public transit) with acetone and embedded the chip and antenna in a resin ring. Via Fashioning Technology.
This is a blank MiFare Classic tag embedded in a ‘porcelain’ looking phone charm. These tags are like those often used for train/bus passes but also found in other systems where a proximity card is desired. The tag contains a NXP S50 chip and an antenna, and is passively powered by the reader/writer when placed a couple inches away. Since this tag has a small antenna, it has to be closer to the antenna than, say, a large credit-card sized tag.
These can be read by almost any 13.56MHz RFID/NFC reader but make sure it can handle MiFare cards as there are a few other encoding standards (like FeLica) They are tested and work greats with both our PN532 NFC/RFID breakout board and Adafruit NFC/RFID Shield for Arduino!
These chips can be written to & store up to 1 KB of data in writable EEPROM divided into banks, and can handle over 100,000 re-writes. You can use our PN532 NFC/RFID breakout board or Adafruit NFC/RFID Shield for Arduino to read and write data to the EEPROM inside the tag. There is also a permanent 4-byte ID burned into the chip that you can use to identify one tag from another – the ID number cannot be changed.
Here are some fun ideas for using NFC/RFID around the house/car from Instructables user CYNICALifornia – he automated functions like toggling wifi and bluetooth, setting ring and alarm volume before bed, and more– I will have to try some of these!
Printable catalog (PDF)
FEED
