RFID Reader kit, redux

My last build of the RFID kit was a little messy, so I decided to re-wire it from scratch on a clean breadboard.

Here’s a photo of the empty breadboard with parts sitting next to it.

Here’s the website I followed. I gt the URL from the package the kit came in.

Here are the power and ground rail connections for the breadboard, and the power and ground for the Arduino.

Here’s the Arduino installed.

Here’s the power and ground connections for the SM130.

Here’s the I2C data connections for the SM130. I also installed the RGB LED at this point. Note that I have the LED plugged into the ground rail, as it shows in the build diagram. <--- discrepancy

Here’s the SM130 installed.

Here’s the antenna installed.

Here’s the freshly-downloaded sketch from the author’s website, loaded into Arduino-0018 on my Mac running Snow Leopard.

Here’s the board type I picked from the list in Arduino-0018. <--- discrepancy

Here’s the circuit running the sketch. Note the red power LED is on, but the RGB LED is not blinking at this point.

Here’s a photo of the Serial Monitor at this point (note that it’s in 19200 baud mode). <--- discrepancy

Here’s the circuit with the included RFID card sitting on top of the antenna.

Here’s a photo of the Serial Monitor at this point (note: no change since last time).

I noted that the LED was not lit, but the code was calling a “toggle” on the “waitingLED” (I determined this by putting in Serial.printlns in the toggle() function). After playing around a bit, I determined that the RGB LED is common anode, not common cathode. So I hooked the common pin to the positive rail instead of the ground rail, which resulted in all 3 colors being lit at once, with blue blinking on and off. So, I had to make a small code change to turn off the R and G parts of the LED:

And now I get a nice blinking blue LED while it’s idling.

I noted 3 discrepancies between the way the circuit behaves relative to the way the code or hardware reads. I have noted them above.
1) The RGB LED on the author’s webpage is clearly shown to be common-to-ground, but the part that’s in my kit is common-to-positive. This required a code change to reflect the different circuit layout.
2) The Arduino included in the kit is marked “Mini Arduino Pro”, and has a CPU marked “ATMEGA168 20AU”, the 20MHz version of the ‘168. However, Arduino-0018 only shows 8MHz versions of the chip. It seems like I should be picking a different board. But which one?
3) Although the sketch opens a 9600 baud serial port (with “Serial.begin(9600)”), if I open a 9600 baud serial port, I get garbage, but 19200 displays the menu properly. This seems bad. Also might be related to the wrong board being chosen in the IDE.

In any case, the circuit still doesn’t work. The card is not recognized, and it’s not clear whether it’s the card, the antenna, or … something else… that’s gone awry.