RFID Roundup!

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is used in all sorts of daily life: from contactless smart cards to warehouse inventory management, tracking livestock to library book loans. It's also commonly used in escape rooms and other similar electronic projects where a number of items (secretly embedded with RFID tags) must be placed in particular positions in order to be detected by (equally secret) readers.

In this video, I want to compare four of the most common sorts of RFID readers used in Arduino electronic projects - RDM6300, MFRC522, PN532, and PN5180 - and describe their usage with particular emphasis on their suitability for such "object placement" puzzles. The most important characteristics I'll be looking for are the read range at which a tag can be detected by the reader, and the ability to create an extensible array of readers such that each reader must be simultanously activated by the appropriate tag ID in order to "solve" the puzzle. I'll also mention price, ease of wiring, and software coding.

[offendingshadows]

Your timing is psychic. Am about to do an RFID project and needed this!

[Kaasgeelheid]

I started the video not knowing anything about implementing RFID with Arduino and you basically shared all the basic knowledge in a very structured manner to get started. Thanks & kudos!!!

[hudsonsoares]

Thanks a lot for all the information in a so clear and concise manner!

[EmmaMaryTaylor]

Thanks very much for this, got the RC522 set up very easily to my Arduino Mega, was struggling with the RDM6300, now happily will leave that part! Will definately pick up one of the PN5180 to give it a go! :)

[scythascytha]

Thank you so much for explaining RFID to me. This was exactly what I was looking for. Also, the idea of using RFID as sort of puzzles is a great one. I'd like to try that as a 5th grade teacher.

[TheDevilOnLine]

FYI, the MFRC522 arduino library has a function to boost the antenna power so you can read cards from about 10 cm's from the reader, so no need to solder!

[miguelangelplazaluna]

Wow !!! es justamente lo que necesitaba... Excelente video y muy claros.. Muchas Gracias desde Chile !!!

[bibelk]

As always, great video.
Very informative and well explained.

Cheers!

[mytechlearning]

Çok bilgilendirici bir video olmuş. Çok teşekkürler. Mfrc 522 kart ile bazı kartları okumada zorlanmıştık. Bulabilirsem ben de Pn5180 kartı deneyeceğim.

[friedmule]

4:30 I have just, by luck, heard of a unit, called a CAN BUS it may be the perfect solution, it can be made to talk to Adriano via only two wire but can handle insanely many inputs, like many RFID tags at once.

[mjyanimations]

the first module has its own uart and so does the usb to serial chip on the arduino. so you don't really need to emulate a serial with the microcontroller. just flash the arduino with a blank sketch so the serial port is unused by the microcontroller. then you can connect the serial pins to the rfid module and the module will speak directly to the usb to serial chip. no microcontroller involved.

[ytfp]

*edit*Perhaps the below might not work if the sensor does not constantly output the card number if held to the device and I am misunderstanding so adding this edit in in case the module does not constanly spam the number while being held** think your RDM6300 issue can be solved in software, if a tag is detected simply start a timer and poll at every x, another solution is while( card number=true) do this else, go back to polling, another solution start action 1 ONLY when card number=true for at least x seconds or minutes. For the more complicated array of readers don't read card 2 unless card one is true, or card 1 is true for x seconds. The whole idea is just like a flag system works only your flag is time, essentially the difference between a short press or a long press on button to produce two or more funtions with only one button, time duration pressed=what function to fire. Off to watch the rest of the video...

We used the RDM6300 in a 4 RFID prop and we had a lot of problems. Finally we only got to recognize the RFID one by one and we could not know if the tag had been removed

[lutzmuller]

@PlayfulTechnology, which system would you recommend to me if I wanted to use it for a model railway? I'm just interested in identifying a locomotive. It should only allow small distances. Would you use the MFR C522?

[harshbenahalkar]

Can I use a PN5180 scanner to detect multiple RFID tags?

[Redbipen]

Holy shit, I finally understand why my mfrc522 captors don't work.

[Andrew-pszp]

I read that the the logic pins are 5-volt tolerant for the RC522

[daniellewis]

Has this area improved over the past 5 years? Is PN5180 still your preferred, or are their newer options?

[dubbeligascheisshausmugg]

you can have multiple I2C buses, uses only one additional data line per added reader. less then SPI

[SantaDragon]

The sad is, that now after over 18 month the libraries for PN5180 still looks very rare ...