A Very Noob Question

Hey there, so I’m curious. I’m looking for a chip that I can add my contact info to phones that utilize their NFC for conferences and whatnot, preferably one that lights up. I have reviewed many of Dangerous Things products and am a bit confused on the differences with the chips. Would you mind directing me to a chip-type so I can continue to research from there? Sorry if this is an annoying question but I did do some searches in this forum and I just can’t seem to find any answers, please be gentle.
Thank you for any and all information :slight_smile:

I think an xSIID should be a good fit, so long as the Vcard data is <1kB :slight_smile: and it has blinkies too

Of course, might be wise to wait for another more experienced forum member to weigh in with their experitse

1 Like

Thanks so much for your reply. I was looking at those, I thought they might be the correct ones but I figured I would verify. :smiley:

I’m sure other will pitch in and give you good pointers for your research. I’m not very good at this myself.

But I will say this: if you want to do contact sharing, there are two important factors:

  • Compatibility: you want a ubiquitous chip that a majority of devices can read out of the box, using the most open and ubiquitous standards possible.

  • Read range: you don’t want to ask whoever you’re sharing your contacts with to hunt for your chip for more than 5 seconds with their cellphone - if their cellphone can read it at all. Unfortunately, in the 13.56 MHz band, that means the transponder’s antenna should be rather large. In fact, the larger the better. Since you want blinkies, you should look at big Flex devices. But they’re not for the squeamish.

1 Like

A little thing to keep in mind: if you intend to share your contact info with iPhone users, an iPhone won’t automatically open Vcard data from an NFC chip.
A workaround is to have your implant link to a website that allows for Vcard download.

An interesting thread: https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/vcard-on-xsiid-done/6060

Edit 19.9.20 at 10:55: striked through “automatically”

@anon3825968 gotcha, yeah I’m def gonna check those out, thank you :slight_smile:
@anon7067117 yanno, that’s not a bad idea at all! I’d rather have a singular website where everything could be found anyway. It would probably be easier than updating my info on the chip in the long run anyway.

I do have a secondary question as well, what programs do the chips need for updating the information on the chip? Or does that come in the kit itself?

I can’t really comment on the range of the xSIID (maybe someone who has one could weigh in?).
Another option are the flex implants (like Rosco mentioned) - maybe a FlexNext? But they are not for the faint of heart

Can you prompt them to open them? I was under the impression that they didn’t read vCards at all.

I know nothing about iPhones, and know nobody who owns an iPhone. Sorry if the question is dumb. But I’d be interested to know if I could share my vCard with an iPhone owner.

You are right, I should have been more careful with my words. As far as I know, iPhones don’t allow you to read Vcards at all.

It would be interesting to see if one could craft an NDEF message containing a vCard record an Android cellphone would read rightaway, and a URL in another record for iPhones - assuming the latter skips the first record it doesn’t understand.

For a NFC chip you can write the data using an app, as long as your phone is NFC enabled.

Beware, there are some issues with the xSIID though.

From the product page:

At the moment there is a problem writing NDEF data to the xSIID. The NTAG I2C chip used in the SIID module has 2kB of memory, split into two large memory sectors. The problem is that the NTAG I2C chip is not commonly used by consumers, and at the moment there are no apps available that properly identify and write to the entire user memory. If you use NFC Tools to write smaller data sets which remain within the 1kB range (the first memory sector) tend to succeed, however larger data which must extend into the second memory sector will fail. TagWriter doesn’t properly write data of any size. We are working with NXP now to fix bugs in their TagWriter application to ensure at least TagWriter will be able to properly write data to all 2kB user memory.

Might want to look into that, I don’t know if they made progress on the fixes or not.
As long as the URL to your website isn’t too long I think you should be fine.

That sounds like an interesting idea. Reminds me a little of the polyglotic pdfs POC||GTFO uses.
But if the iPhone would just refuse to read the tag if it detected a Vcard, that idea wouldn’t work.
Unfortunately I don’t have an iPhone to do any testing on this :confused:

1 Like

Wow, yeah, I think the small webpage idea would be best to remain under 1kb. Haha wait until we have smaller chips that can hold TBs of storage xD

The future certainly is now

The problem isn’t storage capacity, but bandwidth. NFC is 424 kbits/s at the most - and more like the default 106 kbits/s with passive transponders. It would take too long to transfer significant amounts of data.

Also, most of the market for passive tags is sharing URLs, codes, or small tidbits of information. So manufacturers don’t bother adding memory space to keep costs low.

Ahhhhhhh that makes a lot of sense, so it’s more of speed that would be holding us back.

And I do like low costs haha. Having a bit of a middle man for my info (ie, website) is a small sacrifice.

The chips are low cost - as in, ultra-low cost. But once DT has turned them into devices fit and safe for implantation, well… let’s say the price tag has increased a bit :slight_smile:

Also, even with a decently high bandwith, there would still be massive problems with storing large amounts of data of RFID tags.
For example. coupling. You move your hand while you are transfering data and bam, write interrupted.
Or even worse, a bricked tag. This would only get worse with larger amounts of data.

Fwiw I’m planning to do what you want

I have an xSIID (green) in my hand
And I plan to clone a tappy card to it
Read range while not centimeters has been sufficient for easy reads

Just waiting for the stupid card to get here, hopefully sometime in the next week

IPhone XR and forward on iOS 13 or later will show a notification to open a vCard link. Otherwise you have to use an app like NFC Tools
Edit: Also any iPhone post 8 doesn’t have NFC

Okay thanks! So, latter devices then.

When you say link, you mean like in URI? Does it also open vCards entirely contained within the tag, encoded as a mime-type record?