Your smartphone’s NFC capabilities don’t have to be used only for payment or marketing purposes, and NFC tags can allow to create some sort of real-life short cuts to do various things by simply tapping your phone on the tag including:
- Automatically enable and configure Wi-Fi. This can be convenient if you are friend coming to your home, and they can just tap on the tag to get Wi-Fi access without the need to know the password
- Home automation – You can control items in your home, i.e. turn on/off your computer, lights, doors, etc… with a tag.
- Virtual Business Card – You can store your contact details in a tag and share your data with others quickly and easily.
More use cases can be found on “18 Creative & Useful Ways To Use NFC Tags With Your Smartphone” post on trendblog, and it can even be used as a keyfob to enter an apartment complex. You’ll need an app with your NFC enabled smarphone to program the NFC tags, popular ones are NFC Writer by Tagstand and NFC TagWriter by NXP, and no extra hardware is required. There are several tutorials on the web, here’s one of them.
The other good news is that NFC tags can be really cheap (about 50 cents), as if you buy 10 pieces with nice graphics on Tinydeals for $4.99 or even cheaper for $3.34 on Aliexpress with key rings, although it’s unclear if they have 5 only, or 10.
Thanks to onebir for the idea.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HomeyMart-10pcs-Blue-Water-Resistant-Plastic-ABS-125KHZ-RFID-Tag-Keyfob-Included-Key-Ring-Keychain-For/1295802275.html has no uncertainty on the quantity
@Bruce
As I remember NFC works on 13MHz, this one is 125 KHz.
On ali it is possible to find a lot of nice offers. In some cases (if you buy >1k) they can print your design.
For me this store http://www.aliexpress.com/store/508720 was quite adequate (not that cheap, but nice)
@alex
you’re right, I was trying to find the same price point (to figure out if it’s 5 or 10), and I forgot to check the frequency.
I need to get a new phone, one that has NFC… 🙁
Keep in mind that newer smartphone switched from NXP reader chip (PN52x) to Broadcom. This includes S4, S5, Nexus, LG G2. Broadcom readers does not support MIFARE Classic chips (S50/S70) – and those are almost all cheap NFC tags. So you should be looking for MIFARE Ultralight (less memory, no security) or MIFARE DESFire (expensive). Or some other (Ntag203, Broadcom) – but all those are not yet popular, so expect higher pricing too.
Just think before ordering 1000pcs because of 50 cents price tag.
Local european stores are selling Classic chips (cards. keyfobs) for around 0.5 euro. This is the price for less featured Ultralight (marketed as “Compatible with Samsung S4/S5”). DESFire 4Kbytes are around 2 euro.