A driver package for the SL030 RFID tag reader.

For use with SKPang Electronics SL030 RFID module, with a SL030 Raspberry Pi cable, and any model Raspberry Pi, product numbers: RFID-SL030, RSP-SL030-CAB

SKPang product info

Works on all Pi models, with Python2 and Python3.

This package is designed to be zero-install (i.e. you can copy it onto your Pi from a USB memory stick, not need to fiddle with any system settings, run it and it will work). This is specifically to make it easier to use this as a building block for projects in school STEM clubs, where we rarely have internet access.

Run the example as follows:

   python rfid_example.py

or

    python3 rfid_example.py

Then bring a tag close to the reader, and you should see it's ID number displayed on the console. The red light on the front of the reader board also lights when it detects a tag.

You can use any mifare tag - such as an oyster card, an NFC enabled credit or debit card, and many sticky labels and key fobs that are advertised as 'Mifare compatible' (13.56MHz tags). This does NOT include hitag tags, so make sure you get the right tag before you use this card.

The driver only supports the 'read id' method of the card, as that is the most common use case, and what I needed for the projects that I was building at the time. The Mifare standard does support readable and writeable memory locations on cards that have memory, and other secure key transactions.

1. The 20/08/2020 build of RaspberryPi OS Lite doesn't have RPi.GPIO installed for Python3 (does for Python2). You can install it manually though: instructions here

2. On older Pi OS's you will have to prefix commands with sudo to run as root to get access to the GPIOs, but all newer OS's support the gpiomem device node where you no longer need to be running as root. The embedded gpio driver automatically notices the existence of /dev/gpiomem and uses it if it can; it falls back to /dev/mem if it can't access it.

3. The driver will read it's necessary system configuration addresses from the OS device tree in '/proc/device-tree/soc/ranges' if possible, which makes it work on any OS version. If this device tree doesn't exist, it falls back to the default base address of the original PiBv1 - so this should allow it to work out of the box with no fiddling on any OS no matter how old or how new.

4. The code works in both Python2 and Python3, but I'll generally only be testing against Python3 in the future from now on.

5. Because this driver is zero-install, and avoids any fiddling with system settings or installation of other packages, it has an embedded I2C driver of it's own. I2C is usually OFF by default when the OS is first installed, but if you turned the I2C support on it might stop the embedded I2C driver from working as the pins will be in-use by the kernel. Turn off I2C driver support in raspi-config.

6. Because this uses an embedded I2C driver, you can re-map the pins to pretty much any GPIO pins on the Pi GPIO header - change the mapping in file i2c.c here and the CARD_PRESENT is changeable in file init.py here

7. There are various config options in init.py, if you know what you are doing you might find them useful.

Last tested 17/11/2020

@whaleygeek

17 Nov 2020