Texas Instruments TRF7970A NFC Transceiver

Texas Instruments has introduced the TRF7970A NFC Transceiver ” speeds designs with easy-to-configure software that helps developers bring peer-to-peer, ultra-low-power capabilities to more applications”. Here’s an excerpt from the press release: Raising the standard for ultra-low-power near field communication (NFC) devices, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today announced the industry’s lowest power contactless short-range communication transceiver. Ideal for infrastructure devices, the new TRF7970A extends battery life up to 2 times longer than competitive products, as it provides eight selectable power modes ranging from <1 uA in power-down mode to 120 mA in full-power mode. The transceiver comes with easy-to-configure software to help developers get started quickly. Royalty-free stacks are compatible across a broad range of ultra-low-power MSP microcontrollers. Additionally, developers are able to directly access all control registers, allowing for easy fine-tuning of various parameters for the highest performance in every application. You can also read the complete TRF7970A […]

Near Field Communication (NFC) in Public Transport

The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, has recently published a White Paper entitled “NFC in Public Transport” and show how you can leverage NFC technology in such environment. The whitepaper mainly focuses on mobile phones, readers and smart posters. If you need an introduction about NFC, including starting points for developing hardware and software, please read our previous blog entry first. What can NFC do in public transport ? After a short NFC introduction, the whitepaper deals with the possible applications related to public transport including: Transport timetables Link to an up-to-date weather report website Special discounted travel offers Location relevant maps Next bus arrival time Taxi services Emergency calls Phone-to-phone transfer of destination addresses and maps to taxi driver and how NFC can be used before the journey (e.g. paying for parking, using smart poster for products/services promotions […]

Near Field Communication (NFC) Introduction and Software Development

Android 2.3 features near field communication (NFC) in order to allow payment through your phone as it is already implemented in Japan with FeliCa (Felicity Card), a contactless RFID smart card system from Sony, direct communication between NFC devices, RFID reader, etc… NFC is already supported in Samsung / Google Nexus S. In this blog post, we’ll see what near field communication is, which hardware is needed and what needs to be done at the software level (driver and NFC stack). What is Near Field Communication ? Extract from Wikipedia: Near Field Communication or NFC, is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance. The technology is a simple extension of the ISO/IEC 14443 proximity-card standard (proximity card, RFID) that combines the interface of a smartcard and a reader into a single device. An NFC […]

Google Nexus S and Android 2.3 (GingerBread) Unveiled

After much speculation, Google and Samsung finally lifted the lid on the Nexus S, the successor of Nexus One. It will be available for sale (unlocked) in the US on the 16th of December (Best Buy – 529 USD)  and the UK on the 20th of December (Carphone Warehouse – 549.95 GBP) Samsung/Google Nexus S runs Android 2.3 (gingerbread) on a processor based on cortex A8 (Hummingbird) clocked at 1 GHz, with 512 MB RAM, 16 GB internal storage. The full specs are available on Google Nexus S page. One interesting new feature is Near Field Communications (NFC) that will allow the device to read RFIDs (e.g. for Interactive Advertising) and behave like a contact less card. So the phone might be used to make payments in the future and replace your credit/debit card. It could also be used as a contactless stored value smart card  similar to the Octopus […]

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