You’ll probably do less LEARNING with the Flipper, and more DOING, the PM3 would be better to learn with.
My personal experience, I find the Flipper far more reliable and easier to use, and I use it significantly more than the PM3, It’s not often that I need to use my PM3, and when I do, it’s generally to help out somebody else having a problem.
They both have their place in the RFID world, but if you want to learn more, spend your time with the PM3
The flipper is what I use for quick field operation stuff. The pm3 is what I use when I want to do real work or deep dive into a chip. I love my flipper but it is limited in what it can do. The icopy x is nice to if your willing to put in some work so you can use generic cards
I have been bummed with the Flipper mostly because it seems limited in capability and the sensitivity of its NFC/RFID coils seems kinda crap. Until a recent firmware update it didn’t even seem to emulate NFC at all (not even to a phone). SubGHz seems quite handy though for debugging and replaying stuff as I fiddle with home automation and a RTL-SDR so I can more conveniently simulate or test stuff I’m designing.
The Proxmark3 seems rock solid and even putting a fob or card non-precision placement reads 100% of the time, and I like the keyboard command line style UI (as a software engineer its comfortable) but I find it seems the commands vary in syntax from one “fork” to another slightly and I’m struggling to learn the commands. I just wish I didn’t have to bring a whole laptop to use it, the apps I’ve tried for Android haven’t worked properly (then I could use a phone/tablet with keyboard and PM3).
in the field I use a pi zero with auto ap installed to access my pm3 with my phone using ssh works like a dream. I have an rdv4 with Bluetooth and its a nightmare to use so this was my solution if I knew then what I know now I would have never have bought the rdv4
I actually bought a cheap RFID “all in one” lock controller+keypad+reader on eBay (the sucky kind you can pop off the wall and short to bypass) I plan to set up for bench learning stuff, just have to wire it up. My “learning” angle is more curiosity how commercial systems work vs wanting to build my own (I’m one of the nuts who can watch people service elevators, air-conditioners, and antique computers for hours on YouTube and be glued to the finer details)
Last hotel I was at with friends I was surprised to learn (after fighting for HOURS learning how to sniff a conversation and compiling the program to calculate keys) that apparently our keys seemed to use unique sector keys so once I read and successfully dumped my key that didn’t help reading the last essential sectors to unlock a door from a roomate’s key. This surprised me. The “capture nonces” Flipper and the PM3 autopwn also failed on this particular keycard, and although I successfully copied enough to a wristband I still didn’t work out the right PM3 commands to “build” the keyfile and partial-dump the card. I ended up making a Flipper keyfile with what I learned using the PM3 and then reading/copying the keycard with the Flipper (didn’t get all sector keys, but enough it worked, and I’m curious about what that was for still).
I did ponder getting an implant bundle so I could try and roll my own custom watch band or watch band accessory with the capsule…which is how I learned the detectors existed. Still may consider it and just not use the injection part on my body.
That’s unfortunate about the needle fear. I got my first implant in 2019 or so im up to 7 now and could not imagine life without them I use them so much in my day to day at work.
There’s dentists that put you under before they do their work. Wonder if you could go to one next time you need dental work and ask them to install the implants while you’re out cold haha
Yeah…I’m good with a wearable. Its the thought of something going into my body that really freaks me out rather than the needle itself. During the whole pandemic mess when they finally came out with vaccines I didn’t sleep for about 3 days leading up to my shot appointment and nearly had a panic attack while they were going over the various papers and explaining stuff (which was ironic as they tried to explain how its safe and they are experienced with shots and I’m like nah I believe all that, the problem is having to stick it inside me).
Ironically I’m hitting anxiety right now because I have to have a dentist check what I am concerned may be a cavity…and their procedure is to use a hypodermic needle for numbing, not to knock people out.
But wearable tags I could be quite happy with.
Something I’ve been strongly considering - something like this, and put the implant capsule in it potted with silicone, so that I could make my wrist-watch into a wearable key
https://www.amazon.com/Hornady-RFID-Watch-Band-Tag/dp/B08SQ688BB
It sounds like its a hallow thing that would accept a RFID chip/antenna assuming its large enough (or the implant is small enough…dunno how big they are)
Ohh cool! Haven’t seen those before. It looks like it might fit some of the implants.
From my experience, a “Typical” mens watch strap is 22mm wide.
I’m not sure what the inner dimensions of the pocket are, but I imagine they wouldn’t be too far off that
Yeah, and it sounds like the implantable chips are about 14mm so that probably would work decently. Then the question would be which chip to get if I was going to.
Then the question would be, What do you want to do with it?
If you can answer that, we can work backwards to find your best option
Looks like it comes with a “tag installed”
I believe these are LF, utilising EM410x
I am unsure if they are Actually T5577 chips in EM mode.
If they are T5577, then it would be great as is for a number of projects, and may even work with your test lock.
Even if EM, it might already just need to be enrolled
It wasn’t clear if it comes with a chip, but it sounded from reviews like the chips frequently fall out and get lost so removal should be easy to put in a superior chip of my choice (like the multi-technology implant capsule chips) which could be affixed in with silicone or similar so it doesn’t fall out.
I presume it would come with a cheap non-modifiable EM type chip or similar if it comes with anything. My objective is to be able to add “clone a hotel or similar key to something I already wear” so I am guessing Mifaire Classis MAGIC chip and T5577 would be the most common 2 to want.
Goal is to have a body worn replacement for hotel keys and similar so I could open my room door more easily with full hands, or if I don’t have pockets for a keycard (e.g. wearing a costume, swimsuit, etc). I often wear a watch, so that was the logical first thing to wish I could add it to.
Do you know if there is good information about what the NTAG216 chips are vs the Magic Mifaire?
I’m speculating it will be mostly Mifaire Classic cards (hotel keys) of interest to me but I am unclear if the NTAG216 is like “that and more” newer stuff, or a totally different and incompatible thing?
There are similarities like both are 13.56mhz and ISO14443A standard compliant. But they way they work in terms of memory structure and commands are different. The ntag216 is also NFC type 2 compliant meaning any NFC compliant device (phone, reader, etc) will be guaranteed to be able to read it.
But these are just descriptions of the technical differences. Above you mentioned hotel keys. That is not synonymous with mifare… It’s just one application that many different hotel lock systems decided to use the mifare type of chip for. There are other hotel systems that use other types of chips. It’s important not to equate the underlying technology with the application. Applications are enabled and designed around technologies, not the other way around.
The short short answer here is that many people end up with multiple kinds of implants because they want to be able to interact with many different kinds of systems.
That makes sense I suppose.
I know they can potentially use different locking tech, but from what I read it sounds like MFC is overwhelmingly more common than others (though I have a Mifaire Ultralight hotel key from a convention I never figured out how to access with a PM3 beyond basic search-detect)
It sounds like “probably” the good starting point would be the “magic” Mifaire Classic until I find something else in the wild I can’t use it on?
This perfectly highlights another aspect of dealing with any technology… The intersection of technical information versus marketing information. Mifare is more of a marketing term than a description of a technical aspect of the product. Mifare “classic” and Mifare ultralight work to completely different ways. Actually, ntag chips could be considered the next evolution of mifare ultralight… and like ntag vs mifare classic, mifare ultralight is incompatible with mifare classic based applications.
To add more complexity, RFID transponders have memory that can be split up between writable and read-only. Most high frequency transponders have a unique ID or UID, which is located in a section of memory that is read only and cannot be changed. In addition to this memory containing the serial number, there is also typically user memory which contains user programmable memory blocks and pages and sectors… The terminology of which depends on the design of the tag. Mifare classic uses sectors, while mifare ultralight and ntag chips use blocks in pages.
Adding even more complexity, a lot of applications only care about the serial number or UID of the tag, and don’t actually use any of the user programmable memory or the features contained therein. In this way, sometimes an ultralight and a mifare classic tag can both work with the same application because the application only cares about the UID.
Want more complexity? Here you go. The mifare classic chips have a four byte UID while ultralight and ntag chips have a 7 bye UID. The way that ISO 14443A works is that these transponders will respond with their UID to a standard select command, so the application doesn’t have to read the UID out of memory it can just perform a standard select command and get the serial number that way instead of having to know how the memory is arranged and perform the correct read commands to get the UID. But, a lot of software developers for embedded systems use libraries and some of those libraries are designed to read a specific kind of tag only and don’t use this universal approach, making their application narrowly compatible with only one type of chip.
Complexity? You got it. Even if the application gets the UID from the standard ISO 14443A select command, there’s still no guarantee it will handle a 7 byte UID if it’s written to only deal with four byte UIDs. This is extremely common in applications like home deadbolt lock designs where the company only cares about mifare classic because those are the types of fobs they’re including with their lock. Why use this old technology? Because it’s the cheapest chip to put into a fob. Why not support other newer types of chips? Because they don’t give a crap about that they’re selling a lock with some fobs and they don’t care what your plans are.
So now you have a little taste of why RFID is such a tangled mess and people end up with multiple implants… I’d say this is about 10% of the actual spaghetti making up the RFID technology industry.
