RFID Reader Kit

I have been wanting to learn RFID lately, so I picked up an Arduino-based RFID reader/writer kit while at Maker Faire last month.

I built the kit according to the photos I found on the author’s (is a kit maker called an author?) website.

At the moment, I’m having some trouble getting the kit up and running.

I’ve posted some photos here of the circuit as-built.

You can click any of the photos to get a larger version.

Here is the whole circuit, breadboarded out. I built two versions of the RFID module (SM130) part of the circuit, because the author’s website had a setup to test the SM130 by itself, and another to test using the Arduino. The difference was in which serial protocol was used (RX/TX vs I2C I think). At the moment, both are set up for RX/TX. But I also wanted to be able to compare the two circuits to see if they were the same (and if I’d missed anything…)

The antenna covers up some of the wires, so I removed it. It was inserted at row 45.

Then I removed the SM130. I tried to line it up against the breadboard where it was inserted; pin 1 was in row 44.

This is a closeup of the Arduino end of the breadboard, with the USB cable plugged in and the green and yellow serial cable wires leading to the SM130. (off screen). The Arduino starts at row 3, with one row of space between it and the closer SM130 area, which starts at row 16.

This is a detail of the SM130 end of the breadboard, showing the power connections and also the wiring for the SM130. The SM130 was plugged into row 44.