There are a number of different technologies that I have an intrest in, so I guess I’ll start out be listing the different things lying on my workbench and pick the one that I haven’t touched the longest…
- Software Defined Radio Transceiver
- Alarm Panel Home Automation Integration
- RFID Door Lock Kit
- ‘Smart Light’ Hack
- Lawn Sprinkler Automation
Out of my current projects, really only the radio and the RFID Lock I can immediately relate to physics, and given that one of the examples from last semester was AM/FM Radio, that leaves me with RFID.
So RFID… There are a number of cool things that I’ve seen that use RFID, like credit cards and door locks, and even to quickly order food at an airport lounge. I dont have much knowledge past that, other that things I’ve found through experimentation with the door lock kit.
I know that both the card and the reader use coils of wire to communicate, and that there are both high and low frequency variants (bought the wrong cards when I was originally working on the door lock).
The reader for my door lock just spat out the card’s serial number when ever I taped a card, but I doubt that contactless payment cards just store the card number without any encryption, because thats all that the magnetic stripe stores and payment processers are actively trying to discourage just swiping cards. I’d imagine credit cards should be quite sophisticated so I imagine theres probably somting I can look into there.
Before all that though, I’ll need to look into the physics the the cards use to be able to communicate in the first place.