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Ask HN: Can we build our own High Frequency RFID Reader?

6 points by ank9 ↗ HN
I am a software developer with no experience in electronics.

Access to electronics workshop won't be an issue since my uncle has business in electronics. Also, I don't mind reading and researching on RFID.

At the moment my reader should be able to read multiple tags with less than 1 meter of distance.

I would like to know what challenges one can face while building their own RFID reader.

Thanks in advance!

5 comments

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xzcvczx
are the tags active(self-powered) or passive(reader-powered), if reader powered you might have trouble trying to get them from a distance of 1 metre
ank9
Tags would be passive.
trcarney
As long you you don't have a size requirement, I would say go with an Arduino and an NFC expansion board. Then you could just do the software side. It also isn't too expensive. Here's a link to one https://www.arrow.com/en/products/x-nucleo-nfc05a1/stmicroel...
ank9
I don't want to build a NFC based readers. Although, I have watched tutorials on NFC reader with Arduino (RC 522 module). It's not that complicated.

My ideal scenario where reader will be implemented is retail stores (Once prototype is working as expected).

Nextgrid
Look into Proxmark 3. It's an open-source and open-hardware NFC reader.