Well.. we’ve been pondering for a while now.
What should we name our blog?
What will it be about?
Who will maintain it?
Up until now we’ve pretty much been posting random things about NFC here and there. Nothing really cohesive or consistent. Nothing really passionate. But that’s the thing with blogs. If you don’t know what your blog should be passionate about, the writing doesn’t flow.
We’ve entered the last phase of FloJack product development and production. Orders have gone out to suppliers and our manufacturing partners are gearing up to build an initial 1,000 unit order. We settled on a blended production strategy with some components built overseas, some in the US, and final assembly done by the Flomies themselves. We think this will be efficient, cost effective, and most importantly ensure the highest level of product quality. Keep reading for a full production update:
The Flomio team has been super busy the last few weeks and we’re happy to announce we’ve locked the final FloJack PCB and mechanical design, check it out-
Here at Flomio we receive a lot of questions about how NFC tags work. What’s the difference between 14443A and 14443B? What’s a Type 2 tag? What about Felica? The NFC space can be a confusing space with multiple standards and tag types to worry about.
We have good news for you – we’ve made a big breakthrough on the battery life of the FloJack.
How you ask?
Believe it or not polling for tags is one of the most energy intensive operations the FloJack performs. It works like this – the FloJack turns on it’s RF transceiver and sends a long series of commands into the air searching for tags. If any tags are in the field it reads each of their UID’s in a process known as “anti-collision”.
Some good news – the first batch of FloJack prototypes is finished! We’ve been hard at work prepping these devices for distribution because we’re certain the feedback from early testers will make the FloJack better for all of our backers.
Last week we announced our plan to open source the FloJack SDK. Well… our team at Flomio moves lightning fast and today we’re excited to officialy announce the release the FloJack Open SDK.
Check it out:
NFC World has the ‘definitive’ list on which phones have NFC. Check it out here.
This post assumes basic familiarity with Java and the Android SDK. It gives you a brief intro on how to talk to the NFC API to read a tag and subscribe to an event that detects it. Read more →
NDEF was authored by our good friend Miller Abel (he’s a stud). The specification details how to organize data to that NFC Forum complaint readers will properly respond to tags they read. We thought to include some slides from the NFC Bootcamp for reference.
