Samsung Announces TecTiles, Brings Programmable NFC Tags to the Masses | Hacker News Reader

Samsung Announces TecTiles, Brings Programmable NFC Tags to the Masses

droid-life.com

43 pointskul22 comments

... or you could get them here: http://www.tagstand.com/ for a third of the price and use an app that ties in with the existing profile infrastructure like tasker.

thanks. kul from Tagstand here. Submitted this to see what HN had to say. We've been working on NFC Task Launcher (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jwsoft.nfc...) for a while now, which is similar to this Samsung app.

This tool is great. I have an NFC sticker on my nightstand lamp now so when I trigger it, my ringer/notification volume goes to zero, alarm volume goes way up, and I set an alarm to wake up the following morning.

I used to be really sloppy at muting the phone at night and this cures that. My wife is a light sleeper and I can now make sure I am not waking her up at stupid o'clock in the morning when I get an email overnight.

I bought a bunch more tags from Tagstand and I am looking forward to finding more stuff to do with them.

First time seeing Tagstand yet I wondered after watching your videos why I have to hold up my phone up to the NFC sticker.

Wouldnt a better UX be the sticker and my device are self aware of each other? I get a notification to check in upon passing the sticker and or an option to allow such notifications?

Though is the field of range between phone and sticker only a short distance as of now?

My phone will only pick up my Clipper card (the only NFC tag I have handy) from roughly an inch away, maybe 2 for phone to (powered) NFC card terminals. The tech isn't very long range.

Simple use... two of these by the door would make my life easier.

Going out: turn off WiFi, turn on GPS, Bluetooth, turn up the ringer volume and screen brightness, etc.

Coming in: do the reverse.

Of course I can make it even easier with On{X} and trigger the same on detection of my home WiFi network (other than turning off WiFi of course)

When you lose the home Wifi signal, do the 'going out' actions (including turn off Wifi). When GPS tells you you're back home, do the 'coming in' actions (including Wifi back on). Seems even smoother than NFC touchpoints.

That requires running GPS a lot. Better to just look for certain sets of cell towers. Llama does this on Android already.

iOS does this with Location reminders. Not editing system settings, but you can geofence like this.

You would only need one and toggle the actions instead :) That's what I did anyway, but the biggest drawback (at least on galaxy nexus) is that the phone needs to be unlocked to read NFC.

Curious to know why you want to do most of those things?

Why not just leave them on? Is it a battery issue?

Why not do this with a geofence? Then you don't even have to remember to 'check out' with your phone when you leave the house...

Well you can use a Bluetooth Low energy tag like the Nordic Semiconductor nRF8002, to create a geo fence as well, as you can create a much more precise geofence, but you cannot turn off Bluetooth when you do that :) .

Its things like this that will hopefully continue the push of automation in general society. We as hackers have long seen the power in automation, but the general public sees a computer as something that is powerful, but adds complexity to their life. Apple does a great job at fighting this image that technology == complexity, and that's part of why they are successful, IMHO. I just can't wait until the real wave of automation hits the general market with force.

Are these things rfid under another name? If so, what rfid tech do they use? I have an rfid tag implanted in my hand that I'd love to find a use for in this context :)

yes - but they are passive and short range. this is now known as "near-field communication'

As I understand it, NFC is similar to RFID, but RFID provides one-way communication, while NFC provides two-way communication. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

How is this different from handing your unlocked phone to a stranger and telling them to have at it?

The price ($3 each) is huge. Passive RFID tags usually cost less than $0.15.

Doesn't ICS out-of-the-box support the majority of what this app is trying to accomplish?

Yeah, you could say that. Lots of the features are simply writing uris that trigger intents. That said, they're selling passive tags for $3 each. The user who buys that is likely not going to know how that placing a uri on a tag is easy and free...

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