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As far as I understand with the latest Android SDK it is possible for the phone to act as a 'Tag' to be read by a NFC reader.

I would like to implement the following scenario:

  • Phone gets placed next to an NFC reader
  • The NFC reader collects a GUID (Basically I'd like to read some data via NFC that can be used to uniquely identify the phone/owner, nothing fancy)
  • That GUID is then pushed to a database together with a timestamp

Data collected that way would be browsable via a web page.

1) Is this a possible/valid usage scenario for NFC?

2) What kind of equipment is necessary to accomplish this? (I do have a NFC-enabled phone already)

  • I am specifically interested in the reader (A cheap usb based solution would be preferable) - it needs to be possible to get data off it (so that It can be then later inserted into a database). Anything recommended?

Thanks

zyash
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  • "Is this a possible/valid usage scenario for NFC?" -- yes, so long as the device has your app installed and the user runs the app to start up your "push the GUID" logic before placing it next to the NFC reader. – CommonsWare Oct 08 '12 at 16:14

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It kind of depends on what you mean by 'the phone to act as a "Tag"'. You can't really do card emulation on commercial devices. You can with a rooted phone and the latest version of CyanogenMod though, with certain limitations. The only way for the phone to actively send out data via the official SDK is in P2P mode via Android beam which lets you exchange NDEF messages. If that works for you, as long as you can have your host-side program receive and process those (you will need to find an implementation of SNEP or the Google proprietary 'NDEF push' protocols), the whole system could work. This works out of the box with two Android phones, for an external reader you would have to do more work.

This is a cheap and relatively common reader with drivers for multiple platforms. It does have some timing issues, but should do for most purposes.

Nikolay Elenkov
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    To start up the app on the phone that sends the GUID, you could have the reader first send an NDEF message with an [Android Application Record](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/nfc.html#aar). This will ensure that the proper app has started. (And then the reader has to reset the RF field after reception of the AAR, to allow the app to push its NDEF message containing the GUID.) – NFC guy Oct 09 '12 at 05:25
  • Good idea. This requires Android 4.0 and later, but this shouldn't be a real problem nowadays. – Nikolay Elenkov Oct 09 '12 at 05:38
  • Thank you. I've ordered one. Hopefully I can make this work :) – zyash Oct 09 '12 at 13:34