- Ruby class for reading Octopus RFID card IDs (Hong Kong payment card system) on Linux
The Octopus card is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline systems in Hong Kong.
It can be used to purchase almost anything, such as groceries, snacks, McDonalds and bus or train fares.
Thus practically every person living in Hong Kong carries an Octopus card with a unique ID, and this is already
being leveraged to provide things like access control to apartment buildings.
And before you get excited, please realize that this library does not give you read/write access to the card’s internal data (such as stored value).
It simply returns the cards unique ID.
- USB Octopus Card Reader (Sony FeliCa ISO14443C)
- Purchase a 14443C-R-USB-D2 from http://www.rfidshop.com.hk/ under Passive RFID Reader → 13.56Mhz → ISO14443C – Sony Felica
- serialport gem
sudo gem install serialport
Note: Linux already comes with standard drivers for the Cygwin UART chip that this device uses. The device will be registered at /dev/ttyUSB0 when it is plugged in.
| octopus.rb | Contains ‘Octopus’ class. |
| octopus_test.rb | Simple testing script that wraps the Octopus class and prints tags as they are read. |
| octopus_id_espeak_test.rb | requires ‘espeak’ (get it with: $ sudo apt-get install espeak). Just a basic demo that shows the kind of thing you can do with this library. |
You can write different ‘setup strings’ to the reader to configure it.
This is also useful when the reader plays up and needs to be reset, but note that the ‘Octopus’ class resets the reader whenever it is initialized.
Below are the different interfaces for each setup string:
55AA0102C455AA = C4 = RS232 interface
55AA0102C055AA = C0 = wiegand 26bit interface
55AA0102C155AA = C1 = wiegand 34bit interface
55AA0102C255AA = C2 = wiegand 36bit interface
55AA0102C355AA = C3 = wiegand 44bit interface
(The USB reader uses the C4 = RS232 interface)
Get the manufacturer’s windows testing tool from here: http://www.rfidshop.com.hk/datasheet/14443C/slcomv10.zip