For two of them, no. The third has been moved but not recently, maybe a month ago the whole shop moved around and the readers are now much closer to the registers which are metal.
They are all different, however I don’t know if they are all different brands, so they all could have received the same update. This would be my best guess for why all three started having issues all at once.
With my minor knowledge of card reader tech and set up and with some patience from the cashier’s, I’m going to have to see if they’ll let me use an RFID diagnostic card to find where the field is best now.
This probably won’t be as helpful as you might think… terminals tend to put out a ton of power because they are trying to reach out and talk to phones at a good distance away. This works because phones are active devices which put out their own fields, and the two fields couple with each other and pass data. Passive cards (and the RDC) will pick up the field from pretty far away, but then when it comes to actually trying to talk, there’s basically too much power… the terminal is expecting a very powerful modulation from another active device, and that’s not possible with a card… so read performance of a passive device really has nothing to do with the field power produced by a payment terminal.
Ah I see, welp, I’ll figure something out. It’ll probably be as simple as just spending a good minute or two slowly moving my hand around the edges of the readers.
Ok ,so new observations and tests with my implant.
I’ve continued to try different readers since my last update and even started playing around with Tasker. Originally I had a simple event made so that my phone speaks when my debit card is scanned (it’s like an ID in case someone tries to steal my phone). Over the past few days though, ive had trouble getting my phone to scan the implant so I tested it on my flipperzero as well. It seems that it will scan but it takes a few seconds to kind of build up a strong enough signal strength before anything can be read. Two of my original three problem stores it officially won’t scan at, while the third is a 50/50 chance. And the vending machine at my work will scan it, but only if I leave on the reader for 2-3 seconds first. However! After it has successfully scanned, it works as if nothing is wrong for the next 3-4 minutes, resetting that timer after each successful scan. The number of card readers that still scan without issue still immensely out number the ones that either don’t work or take a second, most of the ones that don’t work are usually the really old ones.
I know there are no capacitors or anything that hold electricity in the implant, it’s the chip and some copper coiling. This is just an interesting observation I’ve come across. I’d like to still stand on “it’s a reader issue, not the implant”.
oh man… that is very strange but it sounds kinda like this one chip i converted for Walletmor… it would scan just fine for like 20 seconds… meaning if i kept it on the reader for 20 seconds, it would read… but then it would stop… and be basically dead for like 10 minutes… then it would start working again.
The best I can guess is that there is some kind of contaminant or problem with the silicon die that has to do with chip capacitance… or possibly something else… but likely capacitance. With this chip it seems like the chip would probably heat up from use and slowly go out of spec… then stop. Your chip is probably sliding out of spec, but through use it get’s pulled back into spec.
Try with the proxmark from a fresh state… hf 14a reader -@ and basically let it sit and see if it starts reading after it’s warmed up.
Will do! It will be about 4.5 hours before I can actually do that though as I am currently at work, I was just playing around with tasker during my lunch. But I will update as soon as I can with the results
Sorry for being late, i did multiple rounds of testing.
For all of these tests, i used the underside of my pm3. I have not yet swapped out the mid board for the booster board (grabbed it from the mail today, just havnt had a chance yet)
So after figuring out what hf 14a reader -@ did and how to use it, i let sit ontop of my chip for about 5 minutes but nothing showed up. I eventually tried using my flipper to see if i could “jump start it” and after another few minutes it did finally read. I then immediately put on the pm3 but nothing showed up. After a few more attempts with a few minutes of sitting to let the chip “cool down”, i did finally get a good constant read. I let it sit again so i could try to replicate it, it did take a few tires but it did read again, but it only read 7 times before stopping. The next try only yielded 4 reads but after taking my hand off and putting it back on again, it read non stop until i took my hand back off. After typing most of this, the next test i just sat with the reader on my hand, it did nothing for 2 minutes until i shifted the pm3 slightly on and off my hand (no other movement, basically on then off onto the same spot), then it read non stop until i removed my hand. For the final try, i waited about 15 minutes, occasionally putting my hand in front of the AC unit to get it to ambient room temp (or whatever base line temp subdermal would allow). It read almost immediately (i think it took a second to find a good reading spot which is why it wasnt perfectly immediately). This seemed to be the only test were it would read immediately, all other tests required the chip to sit on the pm3 and be adjusted after a second to start reading.
Im unsure if the first few tries were skewed because i was trying to find where to place my hand so the chip could read. I did seem that the longer i was doing this, the more frequent i could get it read. After each cool down, it would take a little bit to get it start back up but it would start back up eventually (except for the last test were it started right up). The times between each test were arbitrary, if the usage of the flipper invalidates these results, i can do this test again in the morning when i wake up (about 8.5-9 hours from the time of the post).
(i did do one more test just before sending this. Once i got the pm3 reading it, i just let it read continuously for 2 minutes uninterrupted after which i took off a good distance and then back down but slightly shifted. It did start reading as soon as it got close. After 2 minutes of not being read, it would not read again, though im very tired and didnt want to wait for it start reading again after trying for another couple minutes)
I have come with a sign of defeat. My implant will no longer scan w/o needing to left on a scanner for at least 15-20 seconds and even then it’s not guaranteed to scan. Based on everyone’s replies and the slow loss of operation over the course of about a month, my best guess is that sometime in the last month or so I hit my hand on something and it caused a small opening to appear and moisture has been entering the chip.
Thank you all for your help and information <3 I’m now off to go blatantly lie to my banks face as I tell them someone stole my card.
With the vending machine I was testing with, no. There is a 4-5 second cool down in the card reader, you have to decline the transaction then wait while it goes through a bunch non sense. However, I did try scanning my chip then immediately go to see if my flipper could read it (without a repeater sticker as I forgot mine next to my computer while doing the previous pm3 test), of the five or six tries, the flipper only half read it twice. It would change to the “don’t move” screen but wouldn’t be able to fully scan and get to the info screen. (I’m currently at work, so I unfortunately don’t have my pm3 to run that previous test atm). Attempting to leave just the flipper on the chip for a few minutes, shifting it every now and then, yields no results.