Can I do cool things with Sony's FeliCa RFID Reader?

July 3, 2010 2:19 PM

I have a (never used) Sony FeliCa contactless card reader/writer. Are there any cool software-based hacks for this thing out there? I'm not finding much on Google, but I am loath to toss it in the e-waste pile.
posted by retronic to Technology (3 answers total)

I assume you have, or will acquire, a supply of cards to be read/written.

You can do all sorts of stuff with this. One system I've always wanted to implement is a per-room home security policy. So, you can give somebody a card, and grant them access to the front door, the front hall, and the living room; but not any of the rooms upstairs, nor the dining room, den, or kitchen. You could then give this to expected guests, so that they can let themselves in if they're out. Obviously, the granularity of the access control scheme is limited by how many doors you have and how many networked locks you're willing to install.
posted by Netzapper at 2:45 PM on July 3, 2010

Best answer: It's a lot more than an RFID system, it has a whole layer of pretty heavy encryption on top of it which makes it a lot harder to deal with than a run-of-the-mill RFID. It's also made hacking it a bit of a challenge.

The FeliCa systems is mostly used in Asia, not so much in western countries, most of the hacks I've found require a certain amount of familiarity with the Japanese language. Here are a few links to get you started:

A DLL to read the info on a FeliCa chip. (Though it doesn't do anything with encryption.)

Here is a teardown of an OEM FeliCa reader.

Here is a guy who turned it into a door lock.

And here is a page (all in Japanese) running your through the FeliCa SDK from Sony. I can't find an English version of the SDK with my weak Google Fu.

But anyway, once you get access to the thing you can do pretty much anything that you can do with an RFID tag.
posted by Ookseer at 7:51 PM on July 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, folks! I appreciate the info--looks like I have my work cut out for me.
posted by retronic at 7:30 PM on July 9, 2010