So my dream implant right now is a Suica conversion. Suica being the primary transit card in eastern Japan. I know there are complications surrounding conversion of Suicas and other FeliCa cards.
That being said, how viable is it? Anyone know any of the potential hurdles before I go trying to melt down a card?
It’s extremely difficult to successfully extract the felica chip from a suica device. I’ve never been able to remove one.
An interesting thing about every felica based device in Japan, they are all made by Sony. Every single card and Chip and key fob and whatever else you can think of that has a felica chip inside, no matter the branding or what, is actually made by Sony. Other chip manufacturers sell their chips to card manufacturers or fob manufacturers but Sony does not. Sony makes your entire finished product for you.
In doing so, they basically bake in tamper protection. Any attempt to separate the plastic from the antenna and chip will ultimately make the chip unusable. I’ve tried on about 20 or so cards and different devices and I’ve never been able to have a functional chip come out of the effort.
Yea, I figured with how Sony is sometimes. Such a shame.
I imagine extracting these isn’t on the horizon given your efforts? I know the current chip shortages make it even harder to put resources into this. Got a spot on my hand saved for this or maybe a payment conversion.
Appreciate you!
Yeah basically if someone can figure out how to extract the chips from cards or fobs then we could explore options!
This is a really funny and awesome idea, but have you thought about what would happen if your card is put in a weird state and you need to have a station attendant fix it?
You might end up on the news.
I have absolutely thought about this lol. I’ve only had a suica go into one of those weird states twice. The first time I did it intentionally and the second time I simply failed to pay attention when buying shinkansen tickets. Obviously it could happen for any other number of reasons, but for sure a risk I’m willing to take.
Honestly, I’m more worried about ensuring I keep enough of a balance on it since most train stations only have the recharge stations that require you to insert your card.
If you can find a very small suica device like a key fob or disc token, I may be able to just encapsulate the entire thing to make it implantable?
Im pretty sure when I was there, they had a oval style key fob.
I saw it on a sign, but couldn’t read what it said.
I already had a card, so I didn’t look in to it further.
(Not that I would have got it converted and installed for only being there for a month)
All that to say, I think there may be an option
I hadn’t thought of this either. I don’t recall ever seeing one and not finding anything on a quick surface search but a hole I’m gonna head down next.
I would not at all be surprised to learn this was just a promotional item. They slap that little penguin on everything it seems. Does give me hope though. Octopus Card in Hong Kong does have that form factor, and I think those are also FeliCa based.
Based on what these cards look like on the inside, I totally understand why they’re so hard to convert.
