Jonathan Oxer
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Blog > RFID: the 134.2KHz reader lives!
>> RFID: the 134.2KHz reader lives!
Wed, Mar 22nd 8:48pm 2006: Tech Toys
Total, massive, major rockage: after literally months of stuffing around I've finally got a reader talking nicely to a Linux box and reading 134.2KHz ISO-standard implantable RFID tags. Woot!
This is yet another example of a phenomenon I've seen soooo many times that there really should be a name for it: the "we're American, so we're going to do everything just a bit differently to the rest of the world and then take about 50 years to catch up to global standards but in the meantime cause compatibility problems for everyone else" effect.
The thing is, the entire world *other* than the US has settled on an ISO standard that specifies the field frequency, the modulation scheme, etc for implantable RFID tags. And because implantable tags cross two very heavily regulated industries (spectrum allocation and medical devices) you'd better comply with the standard or you're in deep doodoo.
But of course the yanks go "stuff that, we don't need no steenkin 134.2KHz ISO-standard tags: we're gunna run ours at 125KHz!".
And so of course it's a total pain getting anything useful. Australian suppliers carry a hodge-podge mixture of implantable and non-implantable tags and reader-modules at 125KHz and 134.2KHz. Expensive stand-alone 134.2KHz readers: no problem, they're used by vets all the time. Cheap 125KHz reader modules: no problem, they're in plentiful supply thanks to the US so you can just walk into Jaycar and buy them. But cheap 134.2KHz reader modules? No way, Jose.
In the end I had to get reader modules from Germany and they still cost more than three times as much as the locally available 125KHz modules and are far from plug-and-play, but at last with a bit of help from a MAX232 to convert the TTL signal levels to RS232 plus a funky hand-wound reader coil I'm getting sensible stuff coming out the serial port.
Now to shave my hand and find some disinfectant ;-)
Total, massive, major rockage: after literally months of stuffing around I've finally got a reader talking nicely to a Linux box and reading 134.2KHz ISO-standard implantable RFID tags. Woot!
This is yet another example of a phenomenon I've seen soooo many times that there really should be a name for it: the "we're American, so we're going to do everything just a bit differently to the rest of the world and then take about 50 years to catch up to global standards but in the meantime cause compatibility problems for everyone else" effect.
The thing is, the entire world *other* than the US has settled on an ISO standard that specifies the field frequency, the modulation scheme, etc for implantable RFID tags. And because implantable tags cross two very heavily regulated industries (spectrum allocation and medical devices) you'd better comply with the standard or you're in deep doodoo.
But of course the yanks go "stuff that, we don't need no steenkin 134.2KHz ISO-standard tags: we're gunna run ours at 125KHz!".
And so of course it's a total pain getting anything useful. Australian suppliers carry a hodge-podge mixture of implantable and non-implantable tags and reader-modules at 125KHz and 134.2KHz. Expensive stand-alone 134.2KHz readers: no problem, they're used by vets all the time. Cheap 125KHz reader modules: no problem, they're in plentiful supply thanks to the US so you can just walk into Jaycar and buy them. But cheap 134.2KHz reader modules? No way, Jose.
In the end I had to get reader modules from Germany and they still cost more than three times as much as the locally available 125KHz modules and are far from plug-and-play, but at last with a bit of help from a MAX232 to convert the TTL signal levels to RS232 plus a funky hand-wound reader coil I'm getting sensible stuff coming out the serial port.
Now to shave my hand and find some disinfectant ;-)
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