We are using the RFIdeas card readers for badge authentication and it works really well. I am trying to see if we can use the NFC readers on phones as a badge authentication.
Is there any way to take that payload string, effectively the badge ID, and pass it to the Ignition idP login screen to use as a badge for login? I was thinking along the lines of emulating a key press, but don’t know how to do that.
I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be possible, even for us to add. Your actual device would need to send the NFC scan as a keypress (in the barcode scanner world, such a thing would be called a keyboard wedge). You might be able to use badge login, but use other software on the device (one possibility: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taptrack.tappyime) to send the NFC data as keystrokes.
Other than that, it might be theoretically possible for our native apps to offer this functionality, but even that I’m not sure of.
Quick question Deon, what type of device did you get the NFC to work with. We’ve been trying to read the NFC on a Android tablet and phone, and an iPhone and haven’t had any success as of yet. Did you have to have some kind of NFC reader app on the device to get this to work?
I did not get anything to work on mobile. Working flawlessly on Windows using RFIdeas USB keystroking readers.
I do not want to do anything hacky, as I will be the one called when things go sideways. When Inductive supports something more natively, I will investigate again.
If you come up with something cool, I’ll definitely be interested.
If you’re just using a keyboard driver, you can put a bluetooth dongle in between (if the phone supports wireless keyboards). Something like this perhaps: http://handheldsci.com/kb/
Though security is questionable, however, it is already questionable when using keyboard emulators: it’s not too hard to scan a tag without the carrier noticing it is being scanned, and log in to the client by typing the tag value.
Normally, the link between the tag and the scanner is secured (that is, there’s a security algorithm that enforces the tag can’t just be cloned). But if you just use the tag value, it isn’t a secure login anymore.
It should be fine for applications that don’t require high security though (i.e. not accessible to the public, and where you trust employees).
