RFID Stuff

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1

It would be cool for SFE to get some RFID stuff one day, it would be nice to play with.

2

That certainly would be nice. Until then the best deal I have found on RFID equipment that is microcontroller friendly is http://www.hobbyengineering.com/H2177.html

I used one along with a PIC18F to make a door sentry which works very well.

-Bill

3

The board phalanx pointed out is LF (125 KHz) and only works with one type of read-only tag (EM4100).

RFID readers and tags come in a different flavors depending on what frequency band they operate in:

  • LF (125 KHz) - Mostly proprietary standards like the EM4100 and HID (access control cards). Low data rates and range but tolerates metals and liquids in the field well.

  • HF (13.56 MHz) - Lots of work being done at this frequency. There are many standards (ISO15693, ISO14443A, ISO14443B, HF EPC, NFC). Good data rates and range (~1m possible), less tolerant of metals and liquids in field. Large variety of tags available including those with user memory and security. Most smart cards operate at this frequency.

  • UHF (900 MHz) - There is also lots of work being done at this frequency but primarily for supply chain and inventory. A couple of standards (ISO18000-6b and EPC Class 1 Gen 2) in wide use. Long range (~8m with some applications). The RF environment where the tags and readers operates becomes very important at this frequency as any interference will radically reduce the operational distance.

There is also some “RFID” work done at 433 MHz (Savvi active RFID for the military) and 2.4 GHz (Active RFID/Sensor nets).

After a little bit of research on the Internet, I decided to go with the SkyeTek [M1

module as it supported a majority of the HF standards, cheap (~$100), I2C/SPI/TTL interfaces and the host interface protocol is simple and straightforward.

When I contacted one of their sales people, I was informed that the M1 was deprecated in favor of a newer module, the [M2. They also informed me that they no longer sold individual modules unless you first purchased a Developer Kit for ~$1500. Well, I really didn’t feel like dropping that much so I looked around the internet some more and found [RFID Toys. The guy who runs the website wrote a whole book about hobbyist projects involving RFID and some of the projects use the M1.

While RFID Toys doesnt sell the M1 directly, I found a post in the forums there to a company called [Remote Identity that sells RFID tags. Their website doesn’t make any specific mention of the M1 or M2 but, after I spoke to one of the owners via email, I had a couple of M1s and tags in my possession within a couple of days.

To cut a long story short, I had the module up and running within a couple of hours on my Olimex LPC2148 board. I would recommend this module for anyone interested in playing with HF RFID. Just remember you cant buy it directly from [SkyeTek, you have to go through one of their [distributors.](http://www.remoteidentity.com)](http://www.skyetek.com)](http://www.remoteidentity.com)](https://www.rfidtoys.net)](You are being redirected...)](You are being redirected...)

4

Hello,

here you can find an 13.56 MHz device:

http://www.openpcd.org/

It comes with source and schematics, unfortunately the host app

is for linux in the moment only.

Take a look at OpenPICC too.

Regards,

Michael

5

It’s actually quite easy to hook up the HID Prox RFID readers to any microcontroller. Most of them use the Weigand interface, which is basically one line for “1” and one line for “0”, but there are also some clock and data versions.