I’ve been doing some research on different NFC readers to pair with our photons/electrons, and I’d love to gather some advice on hardware from people who have NFC enabled solutions in production.
Are there particular modules being used to good effect, sourced NOT from Amazon or eBay? We need to ensure the solutions work Consistently. Getting modules for $3 is NOT a priority!
These are for usage outside, mounted with an EV Charging Station. MN gets down to -40F, so that’s the temps we’re looking to support.
Thanks! Yes, I saw a number of people were using the PN532. I’d be interested in seeing what people are using in their end user products, specifically the supplier of the PN532 modules were.
I want to makes sure we are not using counterfeits!
@mblackler What do you want to use the NFC for? You will be aware from your research that there are 3 main frequencies LF, HF PN532 (for near field) typically used to read/write to MiFare Classic cards and UHF for asset tracking. My use case was MiFare card reading to identify a user and have a desk controlled by a photon move to the preferred position. For prototyping we used the modules you can buy for $4-5. In my experience these boards are reliable and incredible value versus having a board designed and made. The issues with these are the board is the antenna and they need to be stuck to a surface (enclosure) but the board uses through hole connections thus these need to be cut off, the boards have DIP switches to select the interface [point of failure]. I have discussed adding a NFC antenna and PN532 onto the mother board we have with our electronics engineer, apparently tuning the on board antenna is not simple and thus would be expensive in terms of prototypes. Another approach I looked at was to use a package - ID-20 MFIA (13.56MHz) by ID Innovations. This isn’t cheap - depends upon your volumes but is a solid solution with built-in antenna. Downside is that it does not conform to 0.1" headers so you may need an adaptor board for prototyping and a custom PCB.
Thanks for that info. Yeah: I’ve seen some seriously cheap solutions that people are using out there, and my immediate go to is: “whats the downside”. So ignoring those, we then jump to these kinds of more legit modules which are in the $40-$60 range, which “feels” expensive, especially given their competition.
So, in short: you haven’t really found a solution, so you’re still running with the cheapies? And, yes, it looks like MiFare might be the route we take.
@mblackler - having just come out of a Chinese fabricated and assembled PCB detour of several months (essentially due to component tolerances and board quality) that was driven by customer cost reduction I would suggest you look beyond $35 difference and think time cost! If you building a proof of concept then the cheap board is fine (that is where I got to), if you want to build a lot then it is worthwhile getting a PN532 and antenna integrated into your mother board and if you are in between then I would go with the ID-20 MFIA type of solution - it will work first time and you can then worry about cost later. The other reader solutions I looked at were either much more expensive or had a USB interface whereas I wanted I2C.
Good to know. It’s easy to get distracted by modules the price of a cup of coffee… but getting real about the cost of paying a firmware/hardware peep for x weeks to try and chase down an issue you can’t fix, as well as opportunity cost of not working on other necessary features is often overlooked.