I was thinking it might be helpful to have a dedicated thread for questions people might feel embarrassed to ask—whether they seem too basic, obvious, or not worth making an entire topic for. This could be a great resource for beginners to get answers quickly without the pressure of starting a whole new topic (or having the fear of getting flamed for their question, not that you guys would do that).
So, if you’ve got a question you’ve been holding back, drop it here! No judgment—just helpful answers.
I’ll start:
What happens if you overvolt an RFID tag? For example, if you took a standard key fob and applied a giant amount of power, would it break? Heat up? Do something unexpected?
Effectively and practically, nothing. Specifically though there are differences;
In the xSIID, the NTAG I2C chip that was chosen has 2k of user programmable memory space vs the 1k in the NTAG216, but only 1k is usable for NFC tap applications in the xSIID for reasons.
The NTAG I2C family of chips do two things the NTAG2xx family of chips do not;
Basic unconfigurable field energy harvesting and sends it to an output pin
Can communicate with an I2C controller (host) as an I2C target (peripheral)
In short, we use the power output pin of the NTAGI2C to power the LED in the xSIID. The I2C capability of the NTAGI2C is somewhat useless for most implant applications because it was designed to be put into things like bluetooth speakers or other things that have a controller that might want to talk to phones over NFC for automatic pairing (for example), so the chip cannot act as a controller itself to read things like sensors etc.
Other than that, the configuration options, password features, etc. of the first 1k of the NTAG I2C chip and the NTAG216 are identical. If you want to access memory above 1k in the NTAG I2C chip in the xSIID, you can do it but you need to use raw NFC commands to do it. That’s totally possible to do, so anyone could write an app or use RawNFC to access and read / write those memory blocks, but it’s just not natively readable with current phone implementations of Type 2 NFC tags.
Hi, just adding to this topic because I can’t seem to find a clear answer. Is the xMagic able to share info with NFC-enabled phones or not? On the description of the xMagic it says it can’t, but in other posts on the forum, people say it can.
More info:
I’ve found iFixit’s teardowns (or “Chip ID” section on newer devices) being a good place to find out what chip is inside a phone, and if its made by NXP, or supports Mifare.
Here is an example with the S25 Ultra
Where it likely has an “NXP Semiconductors SN300 NFC controller w/ secure element”
Thanks a lot for the info and links, the post @Pilgrimsmaster gave was super helpful! I think, like @W4ff1e said in the attached post, I’ll get a NExT in one hand and, if I find it useful, get a xMagic in the other one later on.
I decided to just get both after some thought. Just made more sense with how far away the nearest installer was (Kevin was awesome!)
When getting mine done I was actually super glad so I didn’t have to go through the process again though for sure haha.
But after some time, (and thought) I’ve been thinking about a Vivokey Apex Flex or maybe waiting a few years if a next gen version of that will release.
That’s a great find, I’m pretty sure I have a Samsung A53 so I’ll take a look for it.
Still a bit new to RFID and could be wrong, but does this picture show the antenna on the right? That aligns pretty well to where it scans my tags best normally so should be it.
Definitely makes sense getting them both at once, as you said there’s less waiting time and less chance to worry about the installation (or atleast I would, I’m massively squeamish ). I’d definitely get them both at the same time if I could, but I’ll be lucky to even convince my dad to let me get one!
Apex Flex seems super cool as well, just a shame you can’t pay with it yet… Guess I’ll just have to settle for the apex ring (if it ever actually becomes available).
What decided it for me was that, all things considered, they seem fairly easy to remove so I stopped worrying if “I wouldn’t like them”
I mainly want the Apex Flex to be a FIDO security key/passkey (Hard to lose a securitykey embedded in you). Still need to do some more research if/when I fully decide.
My thoughts on the implants are that if I ended up not liking them or getting bored, as long as you don’t interact with them, you can literally forget they’re there, and they’ll ‘go away’! They don’t flash unlike the xSIID and you can’t see them under your skin if you’re not actively trying, so you can literally just ignore them and act like they’re not there.
That’s fair enough with the Apex Flex, one of the reasons I like the idea of an RFID implant so much is because you literally cannot lose it!!
By the way, which cards did you order and where from? to be honest, I have no idea what I should be looking for…
I ordered the Test Card Pack from DT along with a Proxmark3 Easy about a month before my Implants.
And yes, you can easily forget about them imo.
Ive had it accidentally read on my phone maybe once, right when I got them when laying in bed.
Otherwise they are invisible unless you feel for it.
I do still have a little scar from installation, but I don’t notice that either unless I pay attention to my hands. The scar may also fade as I got mine “relatively” recently (4ish Months ago iirc)
One thing I would recommend if you get a Proxmark, is for sure get the Midwest Gadgets Proxmark Field Enhancer by @Hamspiced, they help me alot when trying to read mine on the Proxmark. (Its super easy on my phone with no accessories though, so if that’s all you have you should be good.)
Thanks for the info, I’ll make sure to check them out before jumping into anything implant related.
The frequency of accidentally reading the implants sounds about right, I’m not sure about your phone but as we saw, the antenna’s on the top meaning it’ll be very hard for me to accidentally get a read from it. What you said about the scarring also makes sense, I’d think within a year or two it’d be super faint, its only a small ‘incision’ and shouldn’t be too obvious!
I’ve been looking at @Hamspiced’s shop a lot since it has some pretty sick pieces of kit in it, and the Proxmark field enhancers especially! The midboard doesn’t seem to hard to install as well, so seems like a great purchase.
). I’d definitely get them both at the same time if I could, but I’ll be lucky to even convince my dad to let me get one!
