HydraNFC Shield v2 Delivers Up to 1600 mW with STMicro ST25R3916 NFC Chipset

When Benjamin Vernoux is not working on open-source firmware & tools for AirSpy R0/R2/mini SDR, he spends his time on other projects such as HydraBus STM32 board with NFC support which we covered back in 2014.

The HydraNFC Shield that came with the board was based on Texas Instruments TRF7970A NFC chipset with limited features and not compliant with any RF/NFC standard. Benjamin has now launched HydraNFC Shield v2 powered by STMicro ST25R3916 NFC chipset and equipped with a differential antenna. The new version of the shield still works with the original HydraBus board and allows much more output power (1,600mW vs 200 mW) and supports a wider range of NFC features & standards.

HydraNFC Shield V2 Hydrabus NFC Board
HydraNFC Shields v2 and antenna connected to Hydrabus v1 Board – Click to Enlarge

HydraNFC Shield v2 features and specifications:

  • NFC Chipset – STMicro ST25R3916 high-performance NFC universal device supporting NFC initiator, NFC target, NFC reader and NFC card emulation modes
  • Antenna – Differential antenna with power up to 1600mW and longer range
  • Automatic Antenna Tuning (AAT) to tune the antenna depending on the final environment. (it allows reading tags near metal … when other NFC reader/writer cannot read anything)
  • Automatic gain control and squelch feature to maximize SNR.
  • Measurement of antenna voltage amplitude and phase, on-chip supply and regulated voltages.
  • Noise suppression receiver (NSR) allows reception in noisy environments under harsh conditions, with antenna around noisy LCD displays.
  • Integrated EMVCo 3.0 compliant EMD handling / EMVCo 3.0 analog and digital compliant.
  • Supported modes
    • Reader/Writer
    • P2P initiator (PCM and ACM)
    • P2P target (PCM and ACM)
    • Card emulation
  • Reader/Writer Mode Range
    • > 12cm for NFC-A (ISO14443A) Tags (8.5cm x 5.4cm)
    • > 16cm for NFC-V (ISO15693) Tags(ST25 Tag 5cm x 5cm).
  • Advanced low-level mode to implement MIFARE Classic compliant or other custom protocols.
  • Advanced Debug mode using CSO/CSI pins to check analog/digital output of AM/PM channels channel (before digitizer) / Digital output of AM channel (after digitizer), analog output of AM/PM correlation signal, tag demodulator analog / OOK/ASK digital out.
  • Support all NFC-A/B/V/F modes up to 848kbit/s as well as undocumented modes such as Very High Bit Rate (VHBR) up to 6.8Mbit/s
  • Native NFC-A / ISO14443A and NFC-F / FeliCa card emulation
  • Host Interface – SPI up to 10 Mbit/s tested with success on HydraBus v1 at 10.5Mbit/s)with 512-byte FIFO

HydraNFC Shield V2

The board is compatible with the free STMicroelectronics RFAL for ST25R3916 compliant with the main RF/NFC standards including NFC Forum, EMVCo, ISO14443, ISO15693, ISO18092, MISRA C:2012, and more. You’ll find HydraFW firmware for HydraBus v1/HydraNFC Shield v2, HydraNFC, and an ST25R3916 decoder for Sigrok to visualize data in your PC on Github, as well as some extra documentation on the product page.

NFC Data Capture in Sigrok
NFC Data Capture in Sigrok – Click to Enlarge

Benjamin is selling HydraBus and HydraNFC Shield v2 kit on Hydrabus website for 250 Euros including shipping and insurance.

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2 Replies to “HydraNFC Shield v2 Delivers Up to 1600 mW with STMicro ST25R3916 NFC Chipset”

  1. It looks really nice and promising, please continue to make stuff like this 🙂 I am trying to program an stm32 f7 without any success. On a kiss V2 board. Any ideas ? The stm32 F7 is brand new from farnell and I don’t know how to locate swio and swclk. Thanks for the article.

  2. Thanks for the comment.
    I do not know what is the kiss V2 maybe that https://www.flyduino.net/en_US/shop/product/pr2202-kiss-fc-v2-32bit-flight-controller-2964
    But on the pictures with “pinout” there is no mention of SWD or JTAG pins, maybe they are not documented or not available on any connector.
    Anyway in their description they write “USB controller for easy updates of FC and ESC directly via GUI.” and they provide PDF documentation, firmware and GUI tools for that at end of the page

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