Technology

59116 readers

3258 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

161

Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets (www.righto.com)

submitted 4 months ago by newiceberg@piefed.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called NFC, but what's happening internally? How does the ticket work without a battery? How does it communicate with the turnstile? And how can it be so cheap that you can throw the ticket away after one use? To answer these questions, I opened up a ticket and examined the tiny chip inside.

top 8 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] killea@lemmy.world 29 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Here is a link to the Mastadon post where I saw this first, since this link is showing as non-secure.

https://mastodon.world/@kenshirriff@oldbytes.space/112666771797972297

[–] Ketram@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the link! Always had only a vague understand of NFC communication.

[–] bzarb8ni@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, really appreciated that thorough breakdown!

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I think it's more accurately to call it RFID rather than NFC. It operates on the range of frequencies that NFC also uses but this particular application (access ticket) doesn't require any NFC features. So I doubt they went and made the readers NFC and took the penalties (such as the greatly reduced reading distance) for no practical reason.

As a simple rule of thumb, if the ticket works from more than 5cm away it's most likely not NFC.

If you can use your smartphone instead of a ticket then it's NFC.

[–] Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But can it run doom?

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

I'm fairly sure the entire universe is a mass of computronium that's there for the sole purpose of running Doom.

[–] foggenbooty@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Maybe I'm gate keeping, but RFID technology is... old. Does this belong here?

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Toronto uses a similar system and I keep the tickets because I can tell my phone to run scripts when it scans them lol