Any Gains Being Made In NFC Storage Size?

edited February 2015 in RFID/NFC
I have an NFC chip implanted right now which I love. When people ask what it does I usually end up saying that it is like a little mini usb drive. So, naturally, I started to dream of the day when the implants will have GBs of storage space. It got me thinking that I haven't heard anything on here about anyone trying to increase storage capacity on NFC chips. Im sure that it is really hard to do, and I would really just be happy with enough storage to save a word document to (like 125 kbs). So I guess my question is, is anyone working on increasing storage capacity? Or would it make the implants too big?
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  • edited January 2015
    Sort of... I've been talking to some manufacturers, they recently started making 4kb NFC chips, they are not yet available as implants, but they are working on it, and I've arranged to get a bunch when they are done. no real time frame yet, but I'd guess they are 6 months to 1 year away.

    I know 4kb is still tiny, but it's ~4x the currently available chips.
  • are there any nfc chips with programmable microcontroller+spi? with that and some extra circuitry it'd be possible to wire up micro-sd cards. (good enough powersupply given, a cap might be good enough for burst reads)
  • edited January 2015
    Could you let me know when you have those new tags? I would love to buy one off of you. @AlexSmith

    How many times do you guys think we could remove and replace our tags? Id love to buy a new tag everytime a larger one was available and then replace my old one with it. But there would probably be something happening (like build up of scar tissue) from the repeated trauma to the site that would prevent me from being able to do this?
  • There is a company in germany that produces different bioglass coated chips. The biggest so far is the Mifare DESFire 8k (8kb). I have one of their Mifare Classic implants and they work fine. Range is as to be expected at 13.56 Mhz not great, but usable.

  • louisville13  Absolutely

    Facesitting_Bull oh, that sounds interesting, do you have a link to the DESFire 8k implants? I could only find them in credit card form factors. 
  • When i ordered my implant i called them and they said if the chip fits in the bioglass coating it can be made. I don't know if the DESFire is bigger than the Classik 1k but i don't think so. Huayuan sells glass tags with Classik 4k and DESFire 4k, so i think 8k shouldn't be a problem either.

    I had contact with some companys but most of the products were simple glass tags for animal control, mostly questionable quality. The size of those tags is 2x12 mm. The smallest from b-id are 2.2x12 mm because of the coating. So they probably won't fit in these syringes you use for dogs, but are a little more robust.

    I paid around 5€ per tag in 2013, which was ok taken the fact that i ordered different chips in different sizes and only 20 overall.
  • @Facesitting_Bull So were these tags RFID tags or NFC tags? I went to the website and all I saw was NFC.
  • http://www.b-id.eu/en/rfid-chips

    There is a list of all available chips.
  • Just emailed that site about ordering a 10kb tag...hopefully its not too expensive. What do y'all think about removing my old tag and sticking the new one in the same spot?
  • Hi guys, that list is by no means the definitive list of chips and their sizes. For example, NXP makes a DESFire EV2 tag that is NFC type 4 compliant and can store upwards of 32kb... some are even larger. There are non-NFC compliant tags which can be even bigger, like 256kb and up... but these are not available in wafer fabs suitable to fit them inside glass.

    One thing you have to remember though is that the data rate is dismal for passive 13.56mhz tags. It would take forever to read out 32kb from a tag. For perspective, it takes several seconds to read even 1kb from a Mifare S50 or NTAG216. These larger sizes are typically meant for multi-application support where each application is separately addressable and ultimately small with regard to number of bytes you're working with within each application. If your goal is to store a bunch of data in a single lump, actual user experience may not live up to your expectations.

    Can you tell us a bit more about your intended application?
  • I'm not super duper techie, but I'm pretty sure this company has demonstrated 64kb passive rfid. @Amal , do you have any source for the 256kb non-nfc chips?
  • @Amal
    My intended application was going to be to use my NFC/RFID chip as an implanted flash drive. I use the one I have now to store little bits of info that I don't want to forget, I just thought it would be cool to have a "flash drive" implanted in my hand. But if the read speeds are as slow as you said, it probably wouldn't be worth it.
  • @louisville13, if you can count on a useful Internet connection, use the tag to store the shared URL to a Dropbox (or cloud provider of choice) folder, and use that to store the files. So the tag tells your computer where to get the stored folder, and it doesn't expose the rest of your cloud storage, and you're limited only by the amount of space they give you and your connection speed. Onedrive may be particularly good for this now that they're upping the capacity ante.
  • Hello!
    This is the most interesting thread I found on the board so far.

    @Facesitting_Bull which chip in which size of glass tube worked best for you?
    I thought maybe 3x13mm would have better reading range as videos show that Amals 2x12mm glass tubes don't supply statisfying reading distances.

    I just want to grab the handle of my NFC-Doorlock and open it - I don't want to have to fumble until the sensor to find the implant's sweet spot.

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