Uploaded December 2018 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is used in all sorts of daily life: from contactless smart cards to warehouse inventory management, tracking livestock to library book loans. It's also commonly used in escape rooms and other similar electronic projects where a number of items (secretly embedded with RFID tags) must be placed in particular positions in order to be detected by (equally secret) readers.
In this video, I want to compare four of the most common sorts of RFID readers used in Arduino electronic projects - RDM6300, MFRC522, PN532, and PN5180 - and describe their usage with particular emphasis on their suitability for such "object placement" puzzles. The most important characteristics I'll be looking for are the read range at which a tag can be detected by the reader, and the ability to create an extensible array of readers such that each reader must be simultanously activated by the appropriate tag ID in order to "solve" the puzzle. I'll also mention price, ease of wiring, and software coding.
For accompanying wiring diagrams and software code used, please refer to my Patreon page at patreon.com/posts/23115452
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is used in all sorts of daily life: from contactless smart cards to warehouse inventory management, tracking livestock to library book loans. It's also commonly used in escape rooms and other similar electronic projects where a number of items (secretly embedded with RFID tags) must be placed in particular positions in order to be detected by (equally secret) readers.
In this video, I want to compare four of the most common sorts of RFID readers used in Arduino electronic projects - RDM6300, MFRC522, PN532, and PN5180 - and describe their usage with particular emphasis on their suitability for such "object placement" puzzles. The most important characteristics I'll be looking for are the read range at which a tag can be detected by the reader, and the ability to create an extensible array of readers such that each reader must be simultanously activated by the appropriate tag ID in order to "solve" the puzzle. I'll also mention price, ease of wiring, and software coding.
For accompanying wiring diagrams and software code used, please refer to my Patreon page at patreon.com/posts/23115452
