NFC stands for Near Field Communications and is a short range wireless technology operating at 13.56 MHz. Short range really means short range: in order to communicate, the devices have to be just a few centimeters apart or less.
Near Field Communications has been part of mobile phones since 2012, when Google launched the first NFC-enabled phone, the Google Nexus S. Most Android phones have NFC reading technology. Apple added their NFC technology in 2014 with the iPhone 6/6+ but tag reading is limited to the iPhone 7 and newer.
In May 2021, Chrome for Android 91 came out – that and subsequent versions supports Web NFC – any web developer can experiment and use NFC from simple HTML pages (rather than load a special NFC app).
This guide shows how to experiment with reading and writing tags using an Android phone and Chrome and suitable tags (which are also available from Adafruit).
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