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I want to create a small sample app that can read my employee badge and display it on the screen (or better if I can replicate it so we can use our phones to badge into work rather than our plastic id card)

A few questions 1. Is this technically possible? If so then are there any sample apps/code that can demonstrate how to read the state of the employee id card and save it?

We're using HID cards at this time

Cocoa Dev
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Technically possible ? "Yes" but practically not :-(

Firstly, the employee card won't have any personal information on it - it'll just be a manufacturer ID + serial number. You'll have to source the employee information yourself. An API into the door access mechanism? Very unlikely unless you are on very good terms with the supplier ... Good luck getting past your in-house security team - or even worse - the landlords. Remember these are not technical people and they'll start thinking API = Tom Cruise + Mission Impossible hackers !! Even getting "just" a csv export of employee + ID number from the system may be unobtainable.

Secondly, even if it were possible to encode personal data onto the card (eg the ePassport type), these are only unlocked by supplying certain credentials to "prove" you have the passport in your possession (which is passport number, DOB and expiry date).

If you just wanted a show and tell then you could see if one of the generic NFC reader apps recognises and reads the serial ID and then just go through a slow process of collecting that data yourself.. Obviously when people leave / join / lose their card etc etc you'll have your work cut out for you.

I've done a bit of work with the Android NFC examples (in the SDK). They're not exactly great but they do work and the NFC API is good enough to work with - at least read the public bits etc etc.

Richard Green
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    I don't know anything about NFC but it sounds to me like this is a really over-complicated solution. Why can't you just hold the id next to the phone, capture the raw data on the card, store that and then when the user presses a button, transmit the data? Isn't that exactly what the card does? – Wesley Wiser Dec 20 '11 at 15:19
  • I was hoping more of Wesley's idea. Copy the data from the card in its (encrypted/unencrypted) form and transfer that state to my phone. You're right about not getting the CSV file or access to employee records. Those would be gaurded pretty tight! – Cocoa Dev Dec 20 '11 at 19:37
  • With Android there is no way to emulate a tag with collected data. You can only communicate and control data with the phone as a reader. There are people who are working on locking mechanisms that act as tags, so a phone can be used to open doors, but you would have to change your entire setup to utilize the phone as a key. – Ben Ward Dec 20 '11 at 21:22