NFC Ideas

[ooberandy]

Does anyone have any good tips for using NFC? I've just got some tags and want to see how best to use this.

 

[cable_guy]

I wondered this as well, would like to hear some cool ideas.

Only ones I can think of are putting one in your car so the ringer goes on loud, bluetooth is enabled and wireless is disabled or something?!

 

[NathanBookham]

A guy at my local hackspace showed me this http://sourceforge.net/projects/nfcproxy/. It allows you to grab contactless credit/debit card data and then replay it at a store. Scary!

My dad has a couple, one on his car mount and a couple on his keyring. They are set up to connect to the car's Bluetooth radio and play a podcast. It also starts drive agent as well.

 

[lion7718]

I have a tag on the table that I let others use to get onto my Wi-Fi...this way I don't have to give them the password...scan once it connects, scan again it disconnects.

I also have a keychain I use to unlock my phone...and a ring coming from Kickstarter that will do the same.

 

[hstroph]

A guy at my local hackspace showed me this nfcproxy. It allows you to grab contactless credit/debit card data and then replay it at a store. Scary!

Yeah that's one of those free apps from an unknown author that really doesn't get adequate scrutiny ... the reviews are essentially mindless. If it can store such information then what's to keep the app from communicating it to the author ... or anywhere else, for that matter?

Scary? you say. Paranoid is good, IMHO. SourceForge is all Open-Source, and a quick look at the downloaded NFCProxy source code (mostly java and xml) indicates that it contains 481 lines with web addresses of the form http://, https:// and ftp:// (gotta love Linux):

$ egrep -i -d recurse "http://|https://|ftp://" * | sort | uniq | wc -l
481

Is it all built-in advertising, or the proverbial "what"? Certainly I'd investigate further before installing such an app.

 

[John Bean]

In the interests of balance I will point out that a simple grep of terms containing "http://" are of little help when parsing anything containing XML source as they are mostly (possibly all) not what you think they are - in fact not "real" web addresses at all for the purpose of this discussion.

Here's an example of the first two lines from AndroidManifest.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

Take the trouble to actually look at the sources and it becomes clear why there are so many "web" references

 

[nebler]

I use mine to text the wife I'm heading home from work. That way I can get the hell outa there quicker!

 

[suparuss]

I have one by my bedside table which turns my phone or tablet on or off silent when I scan it - for nighttime use.

I have one in my tablet case which turns on wireless tethering hotspot on my phone (or off, if it's already on). I use it to turn on my phone WiFi anytime I want to access the internet on my tablet when out and about.

I also thought about having one in my car to turn bluetooth on and off, etc. But actually I control that using Llama instead and it's seamless, so scanning an NFC would actually slow me down.

 

[charliecc]

I have one by my bed that sets the alarm and puts it in Airplane mode.

Sorry correction, it used to put it in Airplane mode until Google changed the security permission on that, PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK.

I also have one in the car that pre-composes an SMS to my wife which I can scan when I leave work so she knows when I'll be home

Spoiler

for dinner

. I still have to hit send though.

 

[John Bean]

I have one by my bedside table which turns my phone or tablet on or off silent when I scan it - for nighttime use.

Exactly what I do. My table top is glass and I bought some cheap tag stickers for exactly this sort of thing.

I have one in my tablet case which turns on wireless tethering hotspot on my phone (or off, if it's already on). I use it to turn on my phone WiFi anytime I want to access the internet on my tablet when out and about.

What a good idea! I bought a pack of ten stickers after reading this thread when it was first posted but so far have used only one... make that two

 

[El Presidente]

I've a tag taped to the front door frame that toggles WiFi.

Nothing as exciting as this: KegDroid uses NFC and Android to make pouring beer fun again [Smartbeer]