Change NFC sensor position on Nexus 7 2nd generation

Tagged: Nexus 7, NFC Band-Aid

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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August 10, 2013 at 11:50 pm #4270

Dima
Member

Hello,

We were using Nexus 7 1st generation and NFC sensor location was perfect for our application – we could scan NFC cards from the front side of the tablet (sensor is located near the front facing camera)

We need to be able to access NFC sensor for Nexus 7 2nd generation from the front / side of the tablet. This solution should be scalable and as cheap as possible as it will be used on thousands of the devices . It should also be not visible to customers.

Thank you in advance.

August 11, 2013 at 12:23 am #4271

Richard
Keymaster

Dima, you can order the NFC Band-Aid for the Nexus 7 to solve this problem. It extends the scan surface of the Nexus 7 by 12 inches so you can scan in the front/side of the device with ease. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Richard and the Flomies.

August 11, 2013 at 11:49 am #4273

Dima
Member

Thanks Richard.

We have NFC Band-Aid product that we purchased from you , we attach it to the 1st generation Nexus 7 at the back where NFC sensor is positioned but it doesn’t change the area where our NFC cards can work, we can still use them around the camera location only (we are not using Antenna, the wire broke off as well as we have no place where we can attach the antenna to so if Bandaid were extending the area that would be perfect solution for us).

Please let me know what we might be doing wrong.

Thanks,

Dima

August 14, 2013 at 1:25 am #4334

Dima
Member

Can you please comment on this, we would like to find a solution to extend the range with band aid product only

Thanks,

Dima

August 17, 2013 at 2:31 am #4346

Richard
Keymaster

Hi Dima, sorry you’re experiencing issues. I’ll try to help. For the NFC Band-Aid to work it’s important that you align the Band-Aid precisely over the area where the Nexus 7 NFC scan surface is. This area is between the word “Nexus” on the back of the device and the top edge. See this blog post for more info:

Android Devices and Randomness in the NFC Antenna Placement

Once you have secured the NFC Band-Aid you will need to attach the external antenna included with your order. The size of this external antenna is only 31mm round, therefore it will not effectively read any tags larger than that size. Please take note of that. Also at the moment of attaching the NFC Band-Aid, the devices NFC subsystem might fail to adjust to the change in inductance. You can power cycle the device to account for this. Always verify that the tags can scan on the back of the device (through the Band-Aid) before scanning on the external antenna of the Band-Aid itself.

If you still are having trouble, we ask that you take a short video of what you’re experiencing and go through all the steps I mentioned above. You can post it on YouTube and share the link in this thread. We can take further action from there.

Richard and the Flomies.

August 20, 2013 at 12:11 am #4363

Dima
Member

Thanks Richard,

I am a bit confused because in your first message you said that Band-aid product will extend NFC read area. In the last message you said that we need the antenna. Antenna solution is not good for us because we do not have an easy way to hide the wires and mount the antenna. (Hiding everything is inside is also not good for us because we need thousands of units and this is too complex to modify each unit.

So if we can use some sort of bandaid to extend the range it would be n ideal solution. Please let me know

Thanks,

Dima

August 20, 2013 at 1:22 pm #4367

Richard
Keymaster

Hmm… not possible. NFC Band-Aid requires it’s external antenna component to extend the reach of the scan surface. What you want is to amplify the NFC interface, and that is only possible by modifying the internals of the Nexus 7 hardware. Another option you might consider is a case form factor. We have been working on something like this but it’s still in prototype phase. See the samples below:

if that’s something you’re interested in, we could make them for you but would require an order of at least 1000 units to move this concept to production. It would also take approximately 3 months to get it done.

Richard and the Flomies.

September 28, 2015 at 12:30 pm #53482

Jose
Participant

Is actually the Nexus 7 1st generation have NFC sensor from the front side of the tablet (sensor is located near the front facing camera) ?

Can you confirm this. Im looking for a similar solution but cant find it. I know anyways that Nexus 7 is off production this year.
Also let me know your progress with the case form factor prototype.

September 28, 2015 at 4:30 pm #53483

Richard
Keymaster

Hi Jose, the Nexus 7 1st generation has the NFC sensor on the top rear side of the tablet. This positioning allows for some tags to be read on the top front side of the tablet beside the front facing camera, however it wasn’t designed to be used this way and frankly the user experience is poor this way. What I mean is that you need to move around and search for a readable area for tags to be read and only tags of the largest size have this capability (ISO cards).

The best option we have found for front face NFC scanning hardware is the NFC Patch Kit or the FloJack.
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