Metal interference with FloBLE tag scans

[MalikParticipant]

Hi Flomies,
We are using NFC stickers (attached to the back of our phones) to tag on to the FloBLE devices. If the tag (and by extension the phone) is a bit away from the reader, the reader picks up the tag right away. But in some cases, when the tag ( and by extension the phone) is touching the reader, it’s kind of a hit and miss. I’m assuming that this is due to the metallic body of the phone which interferes with the field thus making it difficult for the reader to pick up the tag. Is there any way you (or we) can contact ACS and find out if we can fix this issue somehow?

[ScottKeymaster]

Hi Malik,

This would be better solved from a tag standpoint than from the readers. You can look into Metal mount NFC tags from tagstand.com or gototags.com for custom tags to fit your use case and provide better performance when mounted on the metallic body of the phone.

Kind Regards,
Scott

[ScottKeymaster]

Hi Malik,

This would be better solved from a tag standpoint than from the readers. You can look into Metal mount NFC tags from tagstand.com or gototags.com for custom tags to fit your use case and provide better performance when mounted on the metallic body of the phone.

Kind Regards,
Scott

[MalikParticipant]

Hi Scott,
We are already using the tags from tagstand. Is there any way to increase the range/sensitivity of the NFC reader a little bit more (perhaps by increasing the voltage to have a bit wider NFC field)?

[ScottKeymaster]

Hey Malik,

In our experience, this has not affected performance a lot. Either way, it is possible to change this via the configuration dictionary (assuming you are using SDK v2.2). To do this, when initializing set the key ‘Transmit Power’ to

-Objective C
@"Transmit Power": [NSNumber numberWithInt:kHighPower],

-Swift
"Transmit Power" : TransmitPower.highPower.rawValue,

This should change the transmit power from -23dBm to 4dBm.
Let me know if there are any issues with this.

Kind Regards,
Scott

[Author]

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