Hello forum,
Some may know me, some may not. I’m Equip, and I like to think I am quite well read in the realm of RFID. I haunt this forum regularly, terrorising people by answering their questions and ruining dreams.
With pleasantries out of the way, Midwest Gadgets, if you weren’t already aware is the company brainchild of @Hamspiced, They a whole range of products for boosting RFID, proxmark3 easy booster boards, field measures, field generators, field BOOSTERS (stickers and non stickers of various sizes) and a literal field extender that allows you to take in the signal with one node and carry it to another via wire, allowing for covert interactions.
DT sent me some items from Widwest Gadgets with my UG4, and @Hamspiced himself sent me a hoard of items when sending me a VNA to borrow to diagnose some issues I was having.
And this is my review.
Below are the items I received:
Hamspiced asked me to be honest with my review and not leave out any issues I find with the products
I was not given these items in exchange for a review of any kind, simply a gift sent along with an act of kindness of letting me borrow one of his VNAs in a time of struggle for myself.
So let’s get to it.
I will get into the finer details with each specific product, but as an overview, these gadgets are incredible, the quality is insane, and they all do exactly what they say on the tin, they are so well priced for what they do and i cannot point out this fact enough if you have implants, you need these
Repeaters
The repeaters, stickers and standalone are great, they make coupling with the smaller form factor implants (xseries) a breeze, this is life changing if you find yourself unable to couple with readers not designed to handle the small form factor, which is often hotels and a host of office readers, keeping one of these in your wallet for a just in case will make a huge difference in your operability.
They boost read range for tricky readers, and the stickers are convenient if placed on hardware you own that you want to interface with your implants.
Another crucial facet of these is that they stabilise 13.56 MHz from poorly designed readers. Something you may not know is that a not insignificant number of reader models don’t produce a perfect 13.56 MHz field, but instead transmit around 13.3-13.7. This is because a number of factors, namely antenna design and power supply. For passive credentials cards, fobs, and implants, this is not an issue as passive antennas are able to tolerate non-perfect frequencies, the FlipperZero and UG4 are however, not able to handle this disparity, the flipper zero’s Mifare Classic Emulation and the Configuration for the UG4 (UMC) Mifare classic require perfect 13.56mhz or they will not succeed. The repeaters fix this.
Sticking a repeater to your flipper zero totally upgrades its functionality for one of the most used chips in domestic circumstances, and carrying one with you in case your UG4 meets a reader that cannot handle it means you’ll never fail.
i carry one of these in the back of my watch at all times in case i need it, I’ve used it no less than 8 times in the past month out of necessity, and if i hadn’t had it, id not have been able to use my implants.
Proxmark booster boards
The proxmark3 easy is great, but it was not designed with implants in mind, and many find it tricky to couple with them when trying to read/write, and tight communication is needed to ensure no failures.
The booster boards replace the middleboard, which serves no other purpose than spacing for EMF reduction. Honestly, there is no reason not to have it; it makes talking to HF implants worlds easier and cuts down on the frustration of feeling you have to know a martial art just to talk to your implant.
Field Generators
So, there are two generations of this, the DIY and the regular prebuilt one, the former existing because the latter looks funny, I don’t care for looks, but I’m glad a DIY USBC version exists.
These things are nuts, usually showing off my LED’s involves twisting my phone around, using an app to produce a field, having to quit the app and go back to the main screen because it scanned the implant and turned the field off, a whole bunch of annoying and kind of embarrassing fumbles to show off my lights.
The field generators are tiny and powerful. Anyone I have sustained contact with has been forced to see my implants glow because I always carry this bad boy with me, and having it lets me control how long it stays on, which means no fumbling and tumbling with my phone.
If you have an LED implant, you need these; they speak to the whole reason we HAVE LED implants, to show the fact our skin glows, they’re convenient, cheap and make the experience so much cooler.
Field Extender
Now, this one won’t be for everyone but for those of us who can use it, this extender is wild.
Connecting two passive coils together via a wire which you can choose the length of, lets you hide whatever device you are using to read and process a tag or reader and instead present a discreet non obvious pad instead.
I’ve already used this to palm a cred and a reader during a red team engagement, with the other end tied to my proxmark in my bag. It currently sits with one antenna taped to an ACR, with the other side running onto my desk to keep it out of the way and to ensure good quality coupling for while i do mass tag provisioning.
Conclusion
We are in the midst of wizardry, and the products on Midwest Gadgets fulfil a ton of needs you may not even know you had. If these things existed 5 years ago, I’d have never had issues with my implants or flipper that made them non-operable when i needed them.
6 stars out of 5. screw the system because these gadgets and doohickeys are off the charts. Take it from a trusted source that they’re all quality items that will add to your quality of life as a nerd implant haver and general RFID enjoyed.
Thanks again to @Hamspiced and DT for the goodies
Midwest gadgets products can be found on DT, KSEC and the office storefront:
https://www.midwestgadgets.org