If you are looking for a (relatively) low cost NFC development kit, you may interested in Adafruit mbed and NFC/RFID Starter Pack that sells for 134.99 USD.
The kit contains the following items:
- mbed LPC1768 (Cortex M3) development board with mini-B USB cable and reference cards
- NFC/RFID breakout board based on PN532 NFC transceiver
- MiFare RFID card with 1K programmable EEPROM
- Full-sized breadboard
- 40 x 3″ (75mm) long male/male jumper wires
- Standard blue & white 16×2 character LCD + contrast potentiometer + header
- Diffused 5mm RGB LED + 3 x 560 ohm resistors
- Analog temperature sensor (TMP36)
- Piezo buzzer
- 2 x 10K trim potentiometer
- 5 x Tactile Pushbuttons
On the software side, you can use AppNearMe µNFC stack written in C++ that allows you to use a user interface on NFC-enabled smartphone, removing the need for knobs, buttons, screens on your embedded device. During the initial pairing, the NFC board can send a link to download the user interface in Google Play for example. It’s also possible to use the other “peripherals” in your smartphone such as microphone, GPS, … to automatically setup your device and/or store diagnostic data in the cloud.
The guys at AppNearMe has setup a demo showcasing their NFC stack: A mood lamp that you can control with your Android smartphone via NFC. You can turn it on/off and change the light color with a knob.
The development kit can be purchased on Adafruit online store. If you already own an mbed board with an SPI/I2C interface, you should be able to only purchase the NFC breakout board for 50 USD instead.
To get started with development, you can visit mbed NFC page or directly access µNFC stack and API documentation. You might also be interested in details about the mood lamp hardware and software.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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