I already have an xEM and have been looking into the xM1 because I can clone hotel cards to it. I was going to get one for my birthday but saw the announcement for the NeXT v2, and it got me wondering if there might be a v2 of the xM1 or xMagic on the way that includes an LED like the NeXT v2 has.
(Sorry for the run-on sentences, I forgot my ADHD med this morning and my brain can’t word today.)
Sadly no. The only reason we can get an LED working half-way decently with the NExT v2 is that we switched to an NTAG I2C chip which has (for the most part) identical feature set and memory configuration as the NExT’s NTAG216 chip… with the added ability to perform energy harvesting from the NFC field and output that to a stable VCC to power the LED with. Other products like the xM1 or xMagic do not have chip alternatives which have this energy harvesting feature while maintaining the desired “magic” features and memory configuration of the original xM1 / xMagic… so there will likely never be a version of those products with an LED.
Technically it is possible to “piggyback” an LED onto the antenna in parallel to the chip, but small variations in tolerances of chip capacitance, antenna inductance, and LED capacitance all conspire to make producing a consistent result nearly impossible. Without a near perfect balance of multiple factors, either the LED won’t work or the chip won’t… ain’t nobody got time for that 
Depending on the location you may be able to implant an xLED nearby the xM1/xMagic, that way you still get both blink and magic
Awesome, thank you both for your help! Looks like I’ll be placing an order for an xM1 this evening, then later on I’ll get the xSIID when I put the door lock system on my house. Super excited to be getting another chip soon!!
Other than cost, is there any reason not to get an xMagic as opposed to the xM1? Sure, you’ll have an extra T5577, but I find it useful to have my NExT in one arm and my xMagic in the opposite hand (carrying things, and using different readers placed differently).
On that note, if cost is the issue, why not get a NExT2 as opposed to the xSIID ($10 difference, the cost of a small fast food meal)? Well, unless you want red of course.
Just curious
you can, but most hotel have 
reader that have very hard time reading the glassy.
I only had 1 hotel able to ready my xMagic … If you want a more reliable read in hotels, go flexy. I got the UG4 for that and it ready pretty good most of the time (There is some weird contortion from time ot time 
)
It is cost, unfortunately. At its current sale price of $89 the xM1 is $60 less than the xMagic, and while I wouldn’t mind having a second xEM, I can’t afford to throw that much more at it right now.
As for the xSIID…red is my color, I’ll gladly pay the extra $10 for it. 
My xEM works great on the battery-powered reader on the door to my office, and I can’t imagine we spent more on something that’ll get used by one or two people than most hotels do on something that’s going to take the constant onslaught of abuse from the general public.
For reference, here’s a stock photo of the cheap thing I had to install on my office door. It runs on four AA batteries. Sorry for the terrible quality, I couldn’t save the image and had to screenshot & crop instead.
How is that connected to the latch?
It’s amazing you are getting a read on a glassie with that as well. Do you know the brand of the reader? Does it read every time, or do you need to take several attempts?
And sorry. I didn’t mean to sound abrupt. I am genuinely interested in how it works, and would really appreciate any feedback you can provide.
Oh no, you’re good, I completely understand!
It actually reads surprisingly well. Maybe one out of every 15~20 times it’ll misread, make a weird beep, flash a red light, and make a grinding noise at me, but I’ve never had it misread twice in a row.
So, installation required drilling a hole through the door behind where the reader is mounted for a cable to connect it to the control box, then there’s another wire that goes from the control box down to the metal body inside the lock mechanism. Fortunately they provided a plastic plate that had a channel for this wire, and it didn’t need more drilling to get it to where it needed to go. I can take better pictures of the one on my door when I get to the office tomorrow. Not sure of the brand, but I can find that out as well.
So…I just checked out the UG4 cause I was curious how to even install it…and omg, that needle! 
Great. Thanks. That would be great.
Yeah. That look huge and it can be hard puncturing the skin but it is worth it and really no worse than a bee sting for about 10 or 15 seconds.
As promised, here are some pics of the lock on my office door. I also have a few videos of how easily my implant reads as well, but my phone isn’t cooperating so I will have to post those from my computer in a bit.
Exterior:
Interior:
Internals:
Videos…
Read 1:
Read 2:
Read 3 (Not my office, but demonstrates it works well with other readers too):
Wow. And it reads so well. I am really surprised with that given it is battery powered. From the videos, it doesn’t look like it runs any low power cycles or needs to be woken.
Do you have any idea on the brand? I would love to get some.
Thanks for posing.
I think the brand is Networx, but I’m not 100% sure on that.
Also, here’s another video of how well it reads on a third door with that same battery operated puck reader.
