Smart Readers & RFID Scanners
SpringCard offers a wide range of Coupling Devices, Smart Readers and RFID Scanners. Read here the difference between a reader and a couping device.
Smart Readers are devices that combine a coupling device with embedded application software : they are then capable of completing alone a simple transaction with a card, and of finding a short ID compliant with what the treatment system is waiting for. There, you will find explanations about the difference between smart readers and coupling devices.
RFID Scanners are a special type of Smart Readers: they are running in a keyboard emulation mode. They are 'autonomous' contactless readers : that means no software operation is involved on host side to fetch data from contactless cards or RFID tags.
The SpringCard RFID Scanners family includes :
- Access Control readers -where data are typically transmitted to the control unit through a one-way-only interface, such as Dataclock or Wiegand-,
- Bluetooth or USB computer peripherals that behave approximatively like a barcode scanner (they « scan » the RFID label and simulate key presses on the keyboard, just as most barcode scanners do.
They can read serial numbers (CSN) from any ISO/IEC 14443 contactless card or ISO/IEC 15693 vicinity tag. They may also read data from most existing smartcards and RFID products, including popular NXP MIFARE®, ICODE, and MIFARE® DESFire® families.
RFID Scanners are highly configurable, even in the field.
Configuring RFID Scanners
Principles
All our RFID Scanners are configured via MultiConf (available here). It is a free software provided by Springcard to configure our products. If you are in the field, you will use one or more master cards. In the field configuration just needs to present the master card in front of the reader and hold it during 3 seconds.
To configure your master cards, you will also use MultiConf. If each SpringCard's customer is able to build its own set of master cards, the digital signature scheme ensures that the master cards created for one customer is useless on another's readers.
Create your project
Choose the type of device you want to configure
Configure the device, record the configuration and write it into the reader
Card acceptance templates
SpringCard RFID Scanners are capable of managing different kinds of cards and different sources of data on the card -ISO/IEC 14443 & 15693 protocols, raw data from memory cards such as MIFARE® and ICODE, data records from MIFARE® DESFire® or any other T=CL smartcard, etc.
A card acceptance template defines how the reader will identify the card to be read and how it would get the actual data (serial number, block reading, file selection and reading, authentication keys to be used for MIFARE® or MIFARE® DESFire®, etc).
The template also defines which formatting is to be applied to the data (translation to ASCII or to Decimal, constant prefix or suffix, etc).
Each RFID Scanner is able to process up to four card acceptance templates simultaneously (+ 1 for master cards).
This means that four different kinds of contactless cards can coexist on a single site and can be read by a single SpringCard RFID scanner.
Creating your own master cards
- Make sure you have a SpringCard contactless reader/writer. Please note that as a reader-only device, the RFID Scanner itself can't be used to create its own master cards. The list of compliant devices is available here.
- You'll also need blank NXP Desfire cards. Please ask us for some.
- Download and install MultiConf.
After recording the configuration, write it into your Master Card
Need some ready-to-use master cards?
SpringCard may provide ready-to-use Master Cards to configure your RFID Scanners immediately. But you won't be able to change the default cryptographic key. To have some, please ask us.