Consolidating HID/RFID/Proxi Cards

April 2, 2008 8:31 PM

For work, home and various parking decks in the city I have to carry around several HID/RFID/Proxi Cards. How can I consolidate them?

Please help alleviate this dreadful wallet bulge.

posted by davidstith to technology (4 comments total)

Keep the one(s) used solely for parking in your car. If you're not overly fashion conscious, get a lanyard. Lless conspicuously, a retractable keychain thingy in your front pocket--at least that way you're not sitting on quite so many cards, even if they are still in your pants pocket.
posted by Joe Invisible at 9:02 PM on April 2

You could "technically" purchase an RFID reader and then program an active RFID tag of your own to scroll through all the tags you own. It would be quite cool, and worthy of a post on Hackaday.com but would be quite difficult.
posted by sirsteven at 1:12 AM on April 3

I have to carry two, and I just taped 'em together. Less flapping, but no reduction in thickness.
posted by box at 4:56 AM on April 3

Depends on how hooked up you are with the businesses in question.

We have an RFID reader set up in our lab and there were about 1,000 choices (okay, more like 50) for RFID "fobs" of every sort. We just got to pick which shapes / sizes would work for us. One guy got a little o-ring, like the size of a small magnet and he wanted to put it on his shoe (in the laces), but we wouldn't move the reader, so he put that on his keychain. So if you were, say, on the board of your condo, or a higher up at the company (or just a tech guy), you might be able to get a tiny RFID dealio. We had one that was so small that I wanted to mount it to my watch / watch band. Never got around to it though. Perhaps your company works in a managed building, where your co didn't spec the RFID badges / reader. But if you were to bring 12 packs to the operations guys, I bet they could give you permission to call the RFID company and get a different card. To me, you have a social problem, not a technical problem (i.e., saw the cards in half and re-attach!).
posted by zpousman at 5:49 AM on April 3