NFC UID readers
Hi, I’m in the beginning stages of a project installation where when the audience enters they are given a small sculpture with an NFC chip inside (something like the NTAG213). They then tap their sculpture on a reader and that triggers sounds/video unique to their sculpture, and everyone’s contribution is composited in Max/MSP/Jitter.
I need 40 of these readers, and everything I keep coming up with recommends enterprise-focused readers that are like $70USD each — way out of budget for 40 of them. Can anyone recommend a simpler, cheaper, preferably off-the-shelf solution? All I really need is something that can read the UID from the NTAG and report it to Max and I can take it from there.
Search for Arduino RFID reader and you'll find units at around 3-7$, although they'll need to be connected to a controller like an Arduino, Raspberry or ESP32. Depending on your installation, you might be able to use one controller for multiple readers.
Thanks. What would be the criteria for using one controller for multiple readers?
Are the readers static? Can they be moved? Can they be wired or do you want them wireless? How close/far are they from each other? This kind of criteria.
If you can/want to have multiple readers on the same controller, those will probably need to be I2C-compatible (allows you to chain multiple of them) and not just SPI, which is generally limited to two buses. The RFID RC522 is probably a good candidate as it is broadly used, there are many tutorials around it, and it supports both I2C and SPI.
As for the controller, some ESP32 based card could be a good fit. Cheap, plenty of power, and many have bluetooth and wifi if you end up needing to wirelessly connecting them to the computer running Max.
40 readers is a LOT to set up, good luck with that! If you have 40 readers, how many sculptures can be read?
Depending on the sculptures, the installation and the kind of interaction you want, you might want to explore vision-based detection as well, like with some kind of marker/QR code/fiducial that you can put on your sculpture and which is then read by a camera. If you want them to be invisible, you could print them with IR ink and use IR cams (with IR lighting) to detect them.
My I ask how you want to let 40 people come close to the
detector that recognises their action.
That should be considered first, then search for solutions.
RFID would have been handy because one needs no power
to use them.
but they need to get very close to detector(s).
Last time I had a project where public interacted with max ongoings,
simplest solution ended to be to start local web server and let them play with their mobile phones.
but if you want sensor based triggering, rfid may not be best solution,
unless you want to indentify each person.
otherwise any sensor would do. like magnetic hall sensor.
you can wire 40 of them using multiplexers and trigger when someone aproaches them with a little magnet.
100 magnets and 50 sensors cost less then 20 $.
only wiring sensors would need a bit of work.
Each audience member seat has its own reader.
Ok, that is valuable info.
In that case you have planed to wire the seats.
That gives you other options, because you can assign ID to the seat
no matter which sculpture triggers.
If condition is that something in the sculpture triggers the actions,
you have more choice then only rfid, like magnet+hall sensor.
At the end I would see how many wires I need for I2C/SPI bus or
to other types of sensors per seat.
and how to split separate seat rows using multiplexers.
If sculpture is not the condition, then you have even more choices,
down to 1 wire touch sensor....