Magnetic Stripe Cards
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Hi, Does anyone know where to get Magnetic Stripe Cards, Card Embossing, Card Readers, Pin Terminals etc. for legitimate reasons. When googeling, I am burried with links to Hacker sites, trying to sell all sorts of items to forge Credit Cards. I am developing a Software Package for Laundrettes and Drycleaners based in the UK and Ireland, a Swipecard would be the logical successor to a Laundry Ticket.
Bram van Kampen
When I worked at Smart Club Solutions[^], I used Universal Smart Cards[^]. They supply the full range and are hard to beat on price. Also, they are very approachable and happy to advise, pre sale.
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Thanks, but:
Indivara wrote:
but I have no idea about the cost difference
That aspect is sort of important. We are not trying to secure the Bank of England, or, somebody's bank account. We have many years of experience to know that most people want their own clothes back, not someone elses. We would consider the security risk very low. At the same time, we feel that something has to be in place. The system you suggest sounds expensive in terms of hardware required to implement. :)
Bram van Kampen
Bram van Kampen wrote:
The system you suggest sounds expensive in terms of hardware required to implement.
It is expensive, beleive me. The RFID tags are not expensive. Expensive are the readers an writers. And they are very expensive.
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Bram van Kampen wrote:
The system you suggest sounds expensive in terms of hardware required to implement.
It is expensive, beleive me. The RFID tags are not expensive. Expensive are the readers an writers. And they are very expensive.
I see... that is unfortunate. The reason I suggested it is, the things are quite common here in Tokyo. Train / bus season ticket + debit card (cash deducted per use), e-cash, cell phones, door locks (for companies, not household ones)... there must be billions of them around. I assumed they would be a little more expensive, but not prohibitively so (didn't think of the reader's cost).
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Hi, Does anyone know where to get Magnetic Stripe Cards, Card Embossing, Card Readers, Pin Terminals etc. for legitimate reasons. When googeling, I am burried with links to Hacker sites, trying to sell all sorts of items to forge Credit Cards. I am developing a Software Package for Laundrettes and Drycleaners based in the UK and Ireland, a Swipecard would be the logical successor to a Laundry Ticket.
Bram van Kampen
I've been down this road of searching for suppliers in the past and ultimately dealt with a company in the Chicago area called Perfect Plastic, www.perfectplastic.com . My company is based in Ireland, we had no hassle dealing remotely with this supplier and they were very helpful. My one suggestion to you is to have your homework done, be very specific in your requirements. Mag stripe is still the cheapest solution and you will get good pricing for volume orders, e.g. $0.08 per card. If possible, check to see if your solution fits into a known ISO or other standard, your app becomes more adaptable for reuse if you can unearth a standard. Adding bar coding is not expensive. Smartcard tech is still relatively expensive whether chip n pin or rfid, proximity etc Hope that helps
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Or use barcodes - you could then print them yourself for tags to attach to the clothing. Even cheaper than swipe cards!
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Exactly. In my last job, I built POS for Dry-cleaning. Per the (software Company's) owner's request, everything was done via bar-codes. Tickets. "VIP" Cards. Drop-off bags. You name it. Cost to print was not even a consideration. If you cared to put them into plastic laminate, it was still trivial. Worried about forgery? Use 2D bar-codes and encrypt the data. You could link each key to a specific account and further increase security. Why even bother with the magnetic strip?
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I see... that is unfortunate. The reason I suggested it is, the things are quite common here in Tokyo. Train / bus season ticket + debit card (cash deducted per use), e-cash, cell phones, door locks (for companies, not household ones)... there must be billions of them around. I assumed they would be a little more expensive, but not prohibitively so (didn't think of the reader's cost).
Depending of the magnitude of the project, it might be worth the costs, but to small budget projects, this might be a constraint. Of course, it all depends of the use. Some readers (like anttenas) are very expensive, others (like handhelds) are still expensive, but not that much. And there are the lower cost readers (small close range with no interface devices). But all of them are more expensive than magnetic readers. Again, all depends on the needs. RFID could be a solution, but it rarely is for small budget projects. It is usually not worth the extra costs. But a study needs to be made prior to taking such a decision. Also, I've not seen any RFID writers at a reasonable cost. Regards, Fábio
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Just an idea, but wouldn't it be better to use an RFID based card instead of a magnetic card? They seem much easier to use, and are more durable (not erased by magnets), but I have no idea about the cost difference. (edit) http://www.rfid.org/[^] has links to RFID equipment suppliers.
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Depending of the magnitude of the project, it might be worth the costs, but to small budget projects, this might be a constraint. Of course, it all depends of the use. Some readers (like anttenas) are very expensive, others (like handhelds) are still expensive, but not that much. And there are the lower cost readers (small close range with no interface devices). But all of them are more expensive than magnetic readers. Again, all depends on the needs. RFID could be a solution, but it rarely is for small budget projects. It is usually not worth the extra costs. But a study needs to be made prior to taking such a decision. Also, I've not seen any RFID writers at a reasonable cost. Regards, Fábio
Hey RFID is perfect for this application. You don't really need Mag stripes as you don't need to write anything to the card - all you need is a unique ID to attach to the garments. The RFIDs are very reliable in the wash and they come in key-fob format which might just be perfect. As for cost - they may be a little more but think of the application. Having to swipe each card will be a pain for your users as opposed to just waving the tag over the reader (or the reader over the tag). And you don't really need a writer, just a reader to read that unique ID to attach to your customer in the database. This means you can get the older, cheaper 125Khz tags and a simple reader. The key question here may just be how many tags you need? I suggest you go here http://www.stronglink.cn/english/sl102.htm[^] and get a reader for $21USD and a bunch of tags for 40 cents each (much cheaper if you buy bulk, as little as 28 cents). Shipping and customs duty on top of that.
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Bram van Kampen wrote:
The system you suggest sounds expensive in terms of hardware required to implement.
It is expensive, beleive me. The RFID tags are not expensive. Expensive are the readers an writers. And they are very expensive.
I don't think they're that expensive as most of people thinks... You may want to visit sparkfun.com and check under the sensors -> ID section (on the left pannel)... You can get an RF-ID Reader Module (like ID-2, ID-12 or ID-20) between 25-35$ and the fancy USB interface for PC for only 25$... The magnet card reader costs 60$ and the reader/writer costs 140$... You don't need a writer for RF-ID tags, they're pre-programmed with an unique ID... These modules (ID-x, the differences are internal/external antenna and range) are very very very extremadely easy to use with microcontrollers!... They only need power supply (Vcc and Ground connections, 5V I believe, I don't remember) and they just "spit" a TTL UART-like (RS232 compatible with an MAX232 chip) stream with the code of the card you just approached to it (they also have some Wiegand and whatever compatibility mode) and the microcontroller might read it using HW or SW UART... It takes about 5 lines of code in a microcontroller (exagerating a little, of course) to do this task... If you are not messing with microcontrollers, you can get the USB interface in which you might plug in one of these modules (I can't give you further details on this because I haven't used it, only the modules)... Anyway, I don't think you'll use a PC to control all the distributed readers in the laundry, will you??? :~ All the detailed info (datasheets, etc) is on the web site mentioned before... Hope this helps!!! Cheers!!!
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I don't think they're that expensive as most of people thinks... You may want to visit sparkfun.com and check under the sensors -> ID section (on the left pannel)... You can get an RF-ID Reader Module (like ID-2, ID-12 or ID-20) between 25-35$ and the fancy USB interface for PC for only 25$... The magnet card reader costs 60$ and the reader/writer costs 140$... You don't need a writer for RF-ID tags, they're pre-programmed with an unique ID... These modules (ID-x, the differences are internal/external antenna and range) are very very very extremadely easy to use with microcontrollers!... They only need power supply (Vcc and Ground connections, 5V I believe, I don't remember) and they just "spit" a TTL UART-like (RS232 compatible with an MAX232 chip) stream with the code of the card you just approached to it (they also have some Wiegand and whatever compatibility mode) and the microcontroller might read it using HW or SW UART... It takes about 5 lines of code in a microcontroller (exagerating a little, of course) to do this task... If you are not messing with microcontrollers, you can get the USB interface in which you might plug in one of these modules (I can't give you further details on this because I haven't used it, only the modules)... Anyway, I don't think you'll use a PC to control all the distributed readers in the laundry, will you??? :~ All the detailed info (datasheets, etc) is on the web site mentioned before... Hope this helps!!! Cheers!!!
I agree with Stephen J Chin and dmpthekiller. We bought some readers and rfid cards for a project we did a while back and it's really not expensive. You don't need a writer, the cards come with a unique id which you associate with the user in your database. We got our cards here: http://www.futurlec.com/LF\_Cards.shtml Our application was a timeclock application so we got the timeclock elsewhere, they were also fairly cheap, around $100 (had buttons for clocking in and out and to enter passwords and a fingerprint reader as well as rfid).
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Just an idea, but wouldn't it be better to use an RFID based card instead of a magnetic card? They seem much easier to use, and are more durable (not erased by magnets), but I have no idea about the cost difference. (edit) http://www.rfid.org/[^] has links to RFID equipment suppliers.
How about barcodes?
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Bram van Kampen wrote:
The system you suggest sounds expensive in terms of hardware required to implement.
It is expensive, beleive me. The RFID tags are not expensive. Expensive are the readers an writers. And they are very expensive.
RFID: Not expensive. No writer required. RFID come pre-programmed. http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=14&product_id=1023
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Hi, Does anyone know where to get Magnetic Stripe Cards, Card Embossing, Card Readers, Pin Terminals etc. for legitimate reasons. When googeling, I am burried with links to Hacker sites, trying to sell all sorts of items to forge Credit Cards. I am developing a Software Package for Laundrettes and Drycleaners based in the UK and Ireland, a Swipecard would be the logical successor to a Laundry Ticket.
Bram van Kampen
We've done work with Smart Cards in the past. We worked with a company called Debitek that was, at the time, owned by Ingenico. Ingenico is pretty big in Europe I believe so you can check them out. Smart Cards are more expensive than magstripe, but can also hold a lot more data and are more secure. However, it doesn't sound like you'd need that for your solution. As other replies have suggested, MagTek is one of the most well known leaders in this area and we've implemented their magstripe hardware products in the past. I would be interested in talking with you about your solution as we have done a lot of work in this area. Please contact me privately if you'd like to discuss further. Cheers, Chris
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Depending of the magnitude of the project, it might be worth the costs, but to small budget projects, this might be a constraint. Of course, it all depends of the use. Some readers (like anttenas) are very expensive, others (like handhelds) are still expensive, but not that much. And there are the lower cost readers (small close range with no interface devices). But all of them are more expensive than magnetic readers. Again, all depends on the needs. RFID could be a solution, but it rarely is for small budget projects. It is usually not worth the extra costs. But a study needs to be made prior to taking such a decision. Also, I've not seen any RFID writers at a reasonable cost. Regards, Fábio
Fabio Franco wrote:
Also, I've not seen any RFID writers at a reasonable cost.
Ran across this recently.. $50 for 10 tags plus a USB RFID reader. Additional tags look to be about $1 each. http://store.touchatag.com/acatalog/touchatag.html Even Amazon sells these starter kits. Looks like a fun thing to play with, wish I had the time.
patbob
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Fabio Franco wrote:
Also, I've not seen any RFID writers at a reasonable cost.
Ran across this recently.. $50 for 10 tags plus a USB RFID reader. Additional tags look to be about $1 each. http://store.touchatag.com/acatalog/touchatag.html Even Amazon sells these starter kits. Looks like a fun thing to play with, wish I had the time.
patbob
Well, I guess that depends on where you are. Here in brazil they are pretty expensive. Magnetic cards here are always cheaper. And yes, if there is no need to write to a tag, I guess that would be a good choice.
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Hi, Does anyone know where to get Magnetic Stripe Cards, Card Embossing, Card Readers, Pin Terminals etc. for legitimate reasons. When googeling, I am burried with links to Hacker sites, trying to sell all sorts of items to forge Credit Cards. I am developing a Software Package for Laundrettes and Drycleaners based in the UK and Ireland, a Swipecard would be the logical successor to a Laundry Ticket.
Bram van Kampen
Hi, There is a company called MagTek that produces them, they have a website and if you emailed them they can probably provide you the details of a local reseller in your area... either that, or you might be able to buy on line. I think the 'Cherry' range of keyboards also has some models that have card readers built in. Unfortunately I don't know where you get the cards themselves from, but again one of those manufacturers may be able to help with that.
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Hi, Does anyone know where to get Magnetic Stripe Cards, Card Embossing, Card Readers, Pin Terminals etc. for legitimate reasons. When googeling, I am burried with links to Hacker sites, trying to sell all sorts of items to forge Credit Cards. I am developing a Software Package for Laundrettes and Drycleaners based in the UK and Ireland, a Swipecard would be the logical successor to a Laundry Ticket.
Bram van Kampen
www.evolis.com We used the Dualys for while, but most of our customers tend to prefer to use barcodes on the card rather than mag-swipe as its slightly cheaper per card, and they already have barcode scanners. All fairly simple to drive, blank cards ribbons etc reasonably priced.
