9

Getting the most out of near-field communication

TUTORIAL

and internal storage, some of this is taken up by

formatting and metadata, so it’s not the full amount

stated. To put it into context, there’s about enough

left for one poor joke (What do you call a floating

monkey? A hot air baboon!). Rather handily, we’ve

developed ways of allowing people to access further

information from a short sentence – for example, I

could write ‘hackspace.raspberrypi.org’ and that could

be used to access further information. If you were

writing code to use with a reader, you could simply

number the tags, and then have the code look up the

tag number in a list to find out what to do.

BEDDING IN

Some NFC tags come with a sticky backing, but you

can just as easily tape them into a project. The great

thing about NFC tags for data storage is that because

they’re not physically connected to anything for

power, they can be hidden in really small spaces and

permanently encased in resin, and still work. The only

place you can’t really put them is behind metal, as

this blocks the waves and they won’t work. There is a

limit to the depth you can embed them, as the name

suggests, because near-field communication means

you have to be within 5–10 cm in air. This rapidly

FURTHER

Experiment with

different coils of

wire to see what

makes the LED

brightest. Is it the

size of the coil

or the number of

turns that makes

a difference?

IDEAS

Above

There’s a wide range

of NFC hardware

for Raspberry Pi,

Arduino, and other

prototyping platforms

Right

Matt Brailsford

placed an NFC tag

inside a cassette

written with a simple

code. The NFC reader

inside took this code

and sent the music

player to a specific

Spotify playlist

Above

NFC nails lighting up when a contactless

bank card is being read