Discussing RFID
Since there hasn't exactly been a hell of a lot of activity on this forum as of late, I thought I'd see if I can reinvigorate anything. Much of the inactivity seems to be due to some projects stalling, so, in the meantime, how about something a little more straightforward?
We all probably know what a RFID chip is, and why someone would want to implant one. This hack was the first procedure done by many grinders, and is rather straightforward. With this in mind, it seems somewhat surprising that it hasn't gotten an awful lot of attention here. One of the reasons is probably that it's not necessarily the most useful thing to implant, especially if security is what you're after.
Some examples of RFID implanting can be found in Lepht Anonym's blog, since RFID was its first hack, the Evolution by Proxy blog, which talks about @SixEcho and @Hughligen's procedure, and, of course, Amal Graafstra's book, RFID Toys. However, the point of this thread is to stimulate discussion on the topic; most importantly, some novel uses for RFID and how to go about doing them. Possibly, this discussion can give people ideas, either about RFID, or about a similar concept in other projects, and if it gives one person such an idea, I think the discussion will have been worth it.
I'll start with an idea to mildly increase the security of RFID: you know those aluminium-lined sleeves that people keep their ID cards (with similar chips) in, to prevent it from broadcasting when they don't need it to? I was thinking of making a small glove-like object, lined with the same material, which you could take off when you need to use the chip. Of course, the question now becomes "who would even be willing to wear that thing all the time?"
Another idea, which was first mentioned on the Evolution by Proxy blog, was a group-buy for RFID readers. There's quite a few suppliers to choose from, so if anyone's interested in that, we might want to set one of those up.
~Ian
We all probably know what a RFID chip is, and why someone would want to implant one. This hack was the first procedure done by many grinders, and is rather straightforward. With this in mind, it seems somewhat surprising that it hasn't gotten an awful lot of attention here. One of the reasons is probably that it's not necessarily the most useful thing to implant, especially if security is what you're after.
Some examples of RFID implanting can be found in Lepht Anonym's blog, since RFID was its first hack, the Evolution by Proxy blog, which talks about @SixEcho and @Hughligen's procedure, and, of course, Amal Graafstra's book, RFID Toys. However, the point of this thread is to stimulate discussion on the topic; most importantly, some novel uses for RFID and how to go about doing them. Possibly, this discussion can give people ideas, either about RFID, or about a similar concept in other projects, and if it gives one person such an idea, I think the discussion will have been worth it.
I'll start with an idea to mildly increase the security of RFID: you know those aluminium-lined sleeves that people keep their ID cards (with similar chips) in, to prevent it from broadcasting when they don't need it to? I was thinking of making a small glove-like object, lined with the same material, which you could take off when you need to use the chip. Of course, the question now becomes "who would even be willing to wear that thing all the time?"
Another idea, which was first mentioned on the Evolution by Proxy blog, was a group-buy for RFID readers. There's quite a few suppliers to choose from, so if anyone's interested in that, we might want to set one of those up.
~Ian
Tagged:
Comments
Actually, this article's pretty cool, and the discussion isn't yet quite as full of douchebags as it usually is.
~Ian
Sorry if this question its out of line. American here. Doesn't seem an unrealistic fear anymore.
rounded up: RFID implants do carry a certain risk of beeing identified automatically, but compared to other technologies the use of it is sorta limited.
so for now, it is nothing but a toy.
compare to japan's high-end face-recognition project that can scan 40mio faces per second from public surveillance cameras.
I don't know whether the Nd implants would work for that, but either way, you also have to have something that can read the signal.
Now, there is actually a tutorial on programming stuff in Arduino, and one of the episodes is about building and programming a RFID reader. Now, that's interesting; I've long thought that I should try building that myself.
~Ian
there are better ways to communicate with your implant tho.
reading biopotentials from muscle activity, acceleration, light,...
to give you an idea about reading distance. if you go with the atmel chip for a base station then there are a number of different circuits in the datasheet.
with the most simple one you can get about 5 ot 10mm reading distance for a glass tag. the most complex one gives you maybe 5 to 15cm if you have it incredibly well tuned.
aluminum sheets are not a good idea for multiple reasons.
in general, tags behave pretty much the same in and outside the skin. so you can test your setup quite well on the bench, and then decide if it is worth implanting or not.
transmitting a signal via electromagnetic fields is pretty easy. for just a few buttons you have 2 options.
option 1: having an oscilator circuit where your button-presses change the resonance frequency. by detecting the frequency on the base station you can figure out which buttons are pressed (this is used in stuff as drawing tablets, and works with very few passive parts and uses minimum space)
option 2: go the rfid-way. have an oscilator circuit that dampens the signal of the base station. you need more smartness on the implant side. a microcontroller for example. if you power it inductively over the same coils it is still sane to do.
in both cases you need to arrange the implanted induction-coil. and the base station coil. expect a reading range with a maximum somewhere between 2 and 3 cm
i found mine on http://www.vets4petz.nl/back-home-transponder-biotec-p-404.html?language=nl , there might be other resellers near you.
most of those tags arent HITAG compatible. so most readers wont read them out without modification. building your own base-station solves this problem.
with an applicator. all you need is someone to help you pulling up your skin a bit , inject the needle, gently push out the tag while pulling out the needle, done. implanting a tag with applicator is easy, there are many vids on youtube showing it. without applicator, it's a mess.
you could also use an applicator and a regular industrial glasstag. many people did this for compatibiltiy reasons. personally i wouldnt recommend it.