Animal tag info

An animal RFID tag I ordered jut arrived. I got it because I discovered that the pm3 support for animal chips is lacking, read seems to work fine but cloning only works for some fields (admittedly I don’t know why you would want to cone a animal ID tag) and as much as I love my kitties they did not seem like they wanted to help.

I thought since I have one out of the injector and a pm3 I would detail some of the stuff about them in case someone was curios and either has no pet :crying_cat_face: or there animals do not want to help.

If anyone wants me to test/do anything with it hmu.

This is what my PM3 spat out:

[+] FDX-B / ISO 11784/5 Animal Tag ID Found:  Raw : 53 33 71 F2 5A 6F 00 01 
[+] Animal ID          0985-113003908298          
[+] National Code      113003908298 (0x1a4f8eccca)          
[+] Country Code       0985          
[+] Reserved/RFU       0 (0x040)          
[+] Animal Tag         True           
[+] Has extended data  False [0x0]          
[+] CRC-16             0x38C2  [ OK ]           
[+] Valid FDX-B ID found!

This is what it looks like:
image
Sorry I did not think to get something for scale and now it stuck to card so I do not loose it.

I shall post an update on how I go with upgrading the support for animal tags so that this post conforms to the Project category I put it in. :wink:

1 Like

Can you change the animal Id?

Read only is not required by the protocol (at least as far as I have seen so far) but I am yet to identify the actual chip used in the implant I got to find its data sheet. I know it is possible to get hold of writable ones so hopefully mine is. PM3 has no support for anything other than reading, simulating and cloning (partially) to a t55xx chip.

1 Like

Have you thought about a Pet / cat door project?
xEMs in your kittys, :cat:
Utilize 125kHz antenna loop around the Flap door frame, xAC to unlock flap
Just like a Magnet collar, but more Cyborg-y and awesomer :wink
What’s cooler than Cyborg cats?
CyberCat
Except maybe a Cyborg Dog

2 Likes

My kitties are indoors :cat2:

That is a great idea, so great that they actually sell those, also RFID feeding stations, for a pretty penny.

https://www.chewy.com/cat-mate-microchip-cat-door/dp/202202
https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/sureflap-microchip-pet-feeder-2996198

I guess cloning the cards is good for testing them without like shoving your cat it…

Ah, Right you are, I should have looked it up… $80 for a tidy looking unit, No Too badly priced I thought

1 Like

Yeah that was ok tbh. The feeder just is so expensive compared to well, a bowl xD

2 Likes

Do they still use BioCaps(Dunno the actual term) in pet chips? wouldn’t you want one on the xEM for a pet?

Yeah, you would, to stop the migrating.
That would have been a part of the project, but as @NiamhAstra said, there is already a product available, which I think looks pretty good and it works off the already common pet implants, which I guess is operating on 134kHz

1 Like

Hi! I know this is an older thread but do you happen to remember what brand of RFID tag this is?

I was thinking about looking into whether I could store backups of vaccination paperwork and other relevant medical history on my cat’s HomeAgain tag, but have been having a hard time finding any concrete information on the specs for their tags. The paperwork I got with my cat’s only gave me his ID # and instructions for using the HomeAgain site.

I couldn’t get it to read on my phone’s NFC reader (I have a Samsung Note 8) and don’t yet have a Proxmark to try out. There are readers specifically for animal tags like HomeAgain and most seem to work on 125kHz, 128kHz and 134kHz, so I’m guessing my cat’s tag doesn’t work on 125 kHz or I think my phone probably would have been able to read it. Or I was off with my scan location, a cat will only tolerate you rubbing your phone all over him so many times, haha.

Is it worth getting a Proxmark to pursue this? I want to get one to use for myself eventually but I don’t want to get too caught up in buying one for this project if there’s a good chance his chip is read-only or there are other major barriers to storing files on it. I tried doing a bit of searching to see if others on here have done similar but either my keywords were off or there wasn’t any info on this specific RFID tag/application. I hope I haven’t missed anything obvious but it’s definitely possible I have!

Hey @hallways

Almost all pet ID chips are low frequency (125-134kHz). Cell phones read NFC tags that operate at high frequency (13.56MHz). You would need either a proxmark or a Halo reader to interact with your cat’s tag. It’s also likely that any information you store on there will not be visible to a shelter/vet that scans the tags. There’s very little standardization in the pet ID space and if you’re lucky enough that they have a reader, it will only recognize the specific data organization scheme it accepts. No actual animal shelter is going to have a proxmark handy.

Thanks for the advice!

Does the mag-stripe emulation capability not actually allow Samsung to read low-frequency, just make use of it in communicating with payment devices? Sorry if this is a dumb question!

Storing his records on his tag would mostly be for my own use and peace of mind, I definitely don’t expect a vet or shelter to look for anything beyond an ID match in their system, if that - the readers specifically for animal tags seem to have very, very limited utility. Mostly just ID and temperature if the chip is enabled for that and it’s a nicer model.

Definitely not a dumb question, but sadly not. The Magnetic Secure Transmission technology that Samsung utilizes operates between 1600-3200Hz, not 125kHz

This makes sense though, because it has to emulate a person swiping a card. Credit card magstripe tracks only have a few hundred bits, and it takes people about a third of a second to complete a swipe, so that frequency works out.

It might seem like once you have an RF transmitter set up in a phone it would be a simple matter to change to any frequency, but that is not the case.

4 Likes

Appreciate the explanation, that helps a lot!

2 Likes

You could consider an xNT (or something similar )

Links

The xNT on its own is $70
OR
for $50 you get an xNT AND an xEM (in the cyborg bundle)
https://dangerousthings.com/product/cyborg-kit/

And you could read and write to your hearts content…within the tolerance of your cat of course.
One thing you would seriously want to consider is an antimigration cap, that you would want to speak to Amal about.

You actually have a bunch of options.
You will be able to read and write with your phone
an NDEF MESSAGE
Plain text info
A link to a web page with all the info
Also your contact information, address, location, vet location etc.

With a note on the collar tag for the person who finds your cat to “scan with phone” ( I know that is some flawed logic, you could just have that info on the tag itself, and not everybody knows how to use NFC on their phones) However, who doesn’t want a cyborg cat???

CyberCat

3 Likes

Absolutely worth considering once it’s a little less difficult to get to a vet’s office for things like that! Ours is currently doing limited hours as curbside-only and trying to keep it just to existing patient physicals and urgent problems. I wouldn’t want to bother them about getting him re-chipped when there’s really nothing wrong with the chip he does have, except that it’s inconvenient for tinkering :joy:

I’d just been wondering if/hoping that there was a straightforward way to expand the functionality of the chip he already has now that I’m learning more about NFC.

It seems unlikely to me but I might as well ask - is there any chance that having an additional X-series would interfere with a vet tech getting a good read on his HomeAgain tag? Probably not as long as it wasn’t implanted in the same spot, right?

He’s awful about collars, unfortunately! It would be super easy to just make a scannable collar with stuff I already have if he wasn’t. That was actually why I got him chipped in the first place. That and the fact that the last time he got out he got lost in the hallway outside my apartment door, he’s very sweet but also brick stupid, bless him.

I might make a scannable collar anyway, just for fun!

The main thing that causes interference (aka crosstalk) is shared frequency. If you were to implant an xNT, you should have 0 issues, since it’s HF (13.56Mhz). That’s assuming that the HomeAgain tag is 134kHz, but that seems to be a very safe assumption. The standard advice for implant spacing is 5mm, but for an animal, I would probably try and space things out as much as you reasonably can anyways, regarding what the vet would feel comfortable doing. Things are unlikely to migrate with the anti-migration cap, but better safe than sorry, wouldn’t want anything getting pinched, or implants colliding.

1 Like

Nah, You will be fine, HomeAgain™ will be 125kHz-134kHz and the xNT is 13.56MHz so no chance of interference.

For a really cool pet - and for ease of programming at the vet’s, considering pets don’t always sit still on command - you should consider a flexNExT.

Blinking long-range pussy!

Of course, there is also a possibility that you’ll be sued for animal cruelty :slight_smile:

1 Like

This was a trick question, because, who wants a cyborg cat when you can have a cyborg DOG?

The answer was the third post in this thread

1 Like