A while back, Alcatel Lucent were flogging off cheap Tikitag readers and tags due to a naming error. They subsequently became Touchatag, and I picked up a cheap RFID reader and 100 tags for about 10 quid. Bonus. Now to get it working on Linux.
Adam Laurie helpfully wrote the RFIDIOt toolset, and a quick download and tar -zxvf had it on the system.
Install various support files…
apt-get install python-pyscard pcscd pcsc-tools python-pycryptopp python-serial
You may see pcscd starting up. If you don’t, check with ps to see if pcscd is running as a background process. If it is, you can fire up pcsc_scan, and then plug in your reader. All being well, something similar to the following will be printed out.
Waiting for the first reader…
found one
Scanning present readers…
0: ACS ACR 38U-CCID 00 00
… followed by a load of data.
The 0: indicates the reader number, so ctrl+c out of pcsc_scan, and open up RFIDIOtconfig.py in your favourite text editor. Jump down to the readernum= directive, and change that from 1 to 0 (or whatever number was indicated in pcsc_scan).
You’re now good to go. In the case of the Touchatag device, just fire up ./multiselect.py, and slide one of the Touchatag tags across the face of it. All being well, something similar to the output below will be displayed.
bagpuss@x300:~/src/RFIDIOt-1.0a$ ./multiselect.py
multiselect v0.1m (using RFIDIOt v1.0a)
Reader: PCSC ACS ACR 38U-CCID 00 00
(Firmware: ACR122U102, SAM Serial: 065441005C162256, SAM ID: 004033)
Tag ID: 04AF1AB9232580
No card present
It always displays “No card present” when nothing is there. That can easily be changed in multiselect.py, and you can edit it to do anything you want now.
Personally, I’ll be using my reader to log when I arrive at work and leave for home, due my inability to get timesheets handed in more than twice a year 🙂 My boss rocks!
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