1 reply to this topic

[Verdris]

Hi all,

 

I had a fun idea that would add a little flair to a project I'm working on. I do instrument development for a climate research group and I'm building a networked array of instruments (using Netduino!) that communicate with various wireless protocols (WiFi, cellular networks, etc). That's easy enough, but what I want to do is write an android app to allow our field engineers to be able to use NFC communication to receive real-time data from the instruments to their phones and tablets. Previously I was just using QR codes to let the engineers connect to the webserver and automatically navigate to the relevant instrument's page, but in the case of a network failure I want the instruments to still be serviceable.

 

I like the idea of NFC, but I can't output data over an NFC tag without an NFC programmer of some sort. I found this:

 

http://www.nxp.com/d...N532_C1_SDS.pdf

 

 

I'm wondering if anyone has enough information on NFC to tell me if I can use Netduino to interface with this to produce a constant stream of NFC data that I can recover with a smartphone.

 

Or would Bluetooth be better?

[ziggurat29]

you idea is very cool.  bluetooth might be better:

 

*  only a very few phones have nfc

*  last I messed with android NFC, I found the api pretty tedious

*  there are readily available bluetooth doodads you can plug into one of your netduino serial ports for about $10 in unit quantities on ebay from china.

 

on the other hand, I have not done bluetooth serial on the android, so who knows maybe thats even worse.  on iphone is a pita because (last I looked at least), you cant programattically engage the BT (but maybe in your datacollection app, that's not a biggie).

Lastly, I don't know if the pairing issue with bluetooth will be a nightmare.  Maybe not, but something to think about.