Interesting infographic of RFID’s future via Reddit. Make sure to check out the Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID Controller Shield for Arduino (below)!

“Hope you are well – thought I’d share some news today as ThingMagic, recognizing that RFID plays a significant role in the Internet of Things and making Big Data actionable, is introducing the smallest, highest performing RFID reader module that meets the growing demands brought about by a more mobile workforce. In fact, the company depicted the Future of RFID in an Infographic.

“If a stock room employee can carry an RFID reader in his back pocket while going from store room to store room, he’s more productive and efficient. If a parking garage owner can mount an RFID reader on a pillar of an old structure, he is not required to make any structural changes. At only 46 mm long and 26 mm wide, the Mercury6e-Micro offers more flexibility for various uses and environments….”

Read the full press release here.

Check out our NFC/RFID Shield!

Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID Controller Shield for Arduino + Extras

NFC (Near Field Communications) is a way for two devices very close to each other to communicate. Sort of like a very short range bluetooth that doesn’t require authentication. It is an extension of RFID, so anything you can do with RFID you can do with NFC. You can do more stuff with NFC as well, such as communicate bi-directionally with cell phones

Because it can read and write tags, you can always just use this for RFID-tag projects. We carry a few different tags that work great with this chip. It can also work with any other NFC/RFID Type 1 thru 4 tag (and of course all the other NXP MiFare type tags)

The Adafruit shield was designed by RF engineers using the best test equipment to create a layout and antenna with 10cm (4 inch) range, the maximum range possible using the 13.56MHz technology. You can easily attach the shield behind a plastic plate with standoffs and still read cards through a (non-metal) barrier.

This shield is designed to use I2C or SPI communication protocols. I2C is the default, as it uses fewer pins: analog 4 and 5 are used for I2C (of course you can still connect other I2C devices to the bus). Digital #2 is used for “interrupt” notification. This means you don’t have to sit there and ‘poll’ the chip to ask if a target tag has been found, the pin will pull low when a card, phone, etc is within range. You can adjust which pin is used if you need to keep digital #2 for something else. It is also easy to change the shield over to SPI where you can use any 4 digital pins by shorting two solder jumpers on the top of the PCB. Compatible with any “classic” Arduino – NG, Diecimilla, Duemilanove, UNO – as well as Mega R3 or later. For using the I2C interface with Mega R2 or earlier, two wires must be soldered as the I2C pins are in a different location on earlier Megas.

Comes with: the Adafruit NFC/RFID PN532 shield including a tuned 13.56MHz stripline antenna, 36-pin 0.1″ header for attaching the shield to an Arduino. If you want to stack another shield on top or below, check out our stacking headers that allow pass-through stacking. We also toss in a Mifare Classic 1K card! (You can get more tags from us here)

Check out our RFID/NFC project page for documentation, libraries, and other support