nfc - Reading RFID with Android phones

Question

I did enough research on reading RFID tags using Android phones(smart phones).

My understanding of this is that for NFC-enabled smart phones (Nexus S) it is possible to read RFID tags, but there are restrictions.

For non-NFC-enabled Androids we need a RFID reader to which we can communicate from Android using Bluetooth.

My question is:

1. What are the SDK which we use for reading RFID tag from Android Phone(NFC enabled)?
2. If I have to read using Non NFC enabled phone, is there any standard reader available who provides SDK for development purpose?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13081926/reading-rfid-with-android-phones

Answer 1

NFC enabled phones can ONLY read NFC and passive high frequency RFID (HF-RFID). These must be read at an extremely close range, typically a few centimeters. For longer range or any other type of RFID/active RFID, you must use an external reader for handling them with mobile devices.

You can get some decent readers from a lot of manufacturers by simply searching on google. There are a lot of plug in ones for all device types.

I deal a lot with HID readers capable of close proximity scans of HID enabled ID cards as well as NFC from smart phones and smart cards. I use SerialIO badge readers that I load a decryption profile onto that allows our secure company cards to be read and utilized by an application I built. They are great for large scale reliable bluetooth scanning. Because they are bluetooth, they work for PC/Android/iOS/Linux. The only problem is, HID readers are very expensive and are meant for enterprise use. Ours cost about $400 each, but again, they read HID, SmartCards, NFC, and RFID.

If this is a personal project, I suggest just using the phone and purchasing some HF-RFID tags. The tag manufacturer should have an SDK for you to use to connect to and manage the tags. You can also just use androids NFC docs to get started https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/. Most android phones from the last 8 years have NFC, only iPhone 6 and newer apple phones have NFC, but only iOS 11 and newer will work for what you want to do.