I’m 100% sure it will affect the form of the waves, since it’s actually wrapped around the coax and not round, and I’m sure the flat will have a similar effect, so the plan is to more or less “point” a round edge in the direction of use. I can take some good pics today and took a bunch during the build if people are interested. Just didn’t want to hijack/spam this post with too many photos. I ended up with a 22 ohm resistor in series to bring voltage down. I get about 3-4 mm range read on my NExT while set in HID model. It’s similar to the hacked up xAC antenna I first spliced on it as far as range, but not nearly as picky about angle and reliability. I have access to a couple decent Flukes at work so I will try to get some data today if one can measure capacitance. And btw, being the first decently tuned antenna I’ve made, it’s the 3rd core(both the first and second were too short like your first one was :P), and like 6th time I wrapped one.
Pro tip:
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Put image’s in here if you don’t want to spam them, then people like me who would love to see your progress and you do not need to worry about spamming this post with too many photos (not that I think you should anyway, sharing is caring etc)
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Like this:
Images
Very cool project indeed !
Have you modded the easy for an sma connector, have you just tagged it on or something else?
Mine is a proxmark3 rdv2, and I just got a pigtail on amazon that went from the silly little snap on antenna to an rp-sma connector (since I had a ton of rp-sma connectors when I was making fpv cloverleaf antennas(badly I might add)). I finally got an LCR and will do some testing on my antenna this weekend and finish up what I started then post some pics like leumas95 suggested.
So are you going to make a DIY HF antenna next? 
I probably won’t, the HF chips that I work with don’t seem to have the tearing issue so it doesnt seem as critical.
Plus, on the PM3 easy, the HF antenna is ‘non removable’ - so it’d be a bit of time with a dremel and figuring out a good way to add a connector to do it. Plus then building a new ‘non implant’ antenna for it too
This is probably a dumb question but would a 10mm ferrite rod work fine? There are plenty of listings for 10mm ferrite rods but I can’t find many (affordable) 9mm ferrite rods.
I think mine was 9.5 - don’t think 10 would be an issue, go with what you can get!
Sigh… I might undertake this project also
But I’m also not entirely sure my proxmark is even installed correctly… and I’m missing a side plug the prox easy is supposed to have
Half tempted to just buy a rdv4
I think there are 2 versions
If you have a look at the commonly linked to PiSwords one, there is
“Bundle one” which has 2 USB Ports:(one is for powerbank, another can be off-line sniffing) and “Bundle two” which has 1 USB port
That’s kind of why I went straight for that one: I had a feeling it’s one of those things you end up buying anyway in the end because it’s just plain better, and you regret blown money on the inferior version of.
Yea I bought from piswords, apparently I got bundle 1
So I can’t find any other information on what the various light configurations mean, I can tap or hold the button and the light changes to various colors or posistions
Super lost on it if I’m being honest even though I managed to clone my prox work badge to a generic 125khz card
This may help scroll to the bottom there are video links
Ok well I finally got my pm3 installed thanks to some help from darthdomo
Now to start looking at making an antenna
Just a thought… before I commit to a build
Could I buy the prox lf antenna for the rdv4 and gut the antenna from it?
Might be easier / cheaper than building from scratch
Apparently the main issue is that the rdv4 has all of the tuning circuitry on the antenna boards, allowing for very weird designs, whereas previous versions of the Proxmark 3 have on board fixed tuning circuitry that means that rdv4 antennas aren’t compatible.
See here for a better explanation:
Here is someone else who tried what you’re proposing without modification:
(my understanding of antenna design would suggest that if you could figure out / measure the value of the tuning caps on your easy, you might be able to counteract them with other passives, but working out what works best could be very difficult) - you can see a test board by the designer of the ProxLF with multiple values for tuning here:
Hope this helped!
I finally got the supplies in so I’m trying this out now. Unfortunately my PM3 Easy doesn’t even detect the antenna. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing so I’m just following what you guys did.
This is what I have:
When I run “hw tune” I get
[=] ---------- LF Antenna ----------
[+] LF optimal: 1832072.03 V - 0.00 kHz
[+] LF antenna is OK
[=] ---------- HF Antenna ----------
[+] HF antenna: 32.47 V - 13.56 MHz
[+] HF antenna is OK
[-] ⛔ Not showing LF tuning graph since all values is zero.
Is there something obvious that I’m doing wrong? I used superglue to hold the wire in certain spots but I tried to wipe up the excess. I also have about 20cm of extra wire on one end in case I needed more windings. The ferrite rod is cut to a little less than 3.5cm (since 2.5cm was too short for @Compgeek)
Have you checked it for continuity? Could have a break in there maybe
Sorry if this is obvious……. you’ve removed the enamel of the wire where it connects to your Proxmark PCB?