Proud owner of the FP2 since launch, and a not so proud “owner” of type 1 Diabetes here.
As far as I can tell there is no work currently being done either by the good people at Fairphone, or by the community/DIY’ers towards NFC compatibility for the FP2. I’ve seen in the forums that yes, it is on the module wishlist, and that there are several good uses for NFC, including quicker payment methods, connectivity, data transfer etc.
Now, I’m in no way, shape or form learned or competent when it comes to hardware, software or the difficulties or costs pertaining to these areas of development.
However, as a diabetic my knowledge and experience with healthcare is somewhat more extensive. Since a couple of years now, and heading into the future, the latest in equipment for diabetics are these marvelous things called flash glucose monitors.
Simply put, they allow us to get a quick, simple and constant measurement of our glucose levels through scanning a sensor instead of constant fiddling with needles and blood samples. These monitoring systems do include a scanner device, but a smartphone with NFC can perform the same tasks, thereby making the scanner device obsolete.
NFC seems to some extent to already be crucial for partaking in the latest technological advances of society, and will be increasingly so for people like me and many more within practical/individual healthcare. I guess I’m hoping that if someone’s on the fence about developing NFC for FP2, this could help sway them toward feeling that the work is without a doubt worth it, and that the demand will only increase.
Perhaps a naive question. Why do you want an app? Isn’t it supposed to be supported by the ROM, and thus there’s an api that is used by apps that read the email? A generic ndc reader app, or even the programs for the freestyle sensor…
Like I have said I don´t know how to handle the software side…
Writing an app and some code for µC seemed the easiest way to solve the problem
µC evaluates the the nfc-content and sends it via the usb-lines to the phone
The phone would only act as a serial monitor and would show the values in a gui
I really don`t know … I only try to figure out…
EDIT: a integration in the system image would be better … e.g. (like @Iklaus said) if you want to use the freestyle libre …
Ah, i see.i could imagine (i might be seriously off though) that the nfc requesting programme won’t pop up in the play store, as the phone has to state this feature. Sure, this would be a way to read tags from the serial line, but no program would connect as they expect the nfc feature differently (I’m in no way anyhow informed how this works on Android, so take my thoughts with care…). But i think it will be of no use (to those programs) if nfc doesn’t show up in settings. I checked that case with my phone vs the one of my wife, as she needs nfc also. And you can’t scan the freestyle sensor with a genuine nfc program, only with specialised programs.
This really looks interesting. As I’m using a sd card, but my second Sim slot is unused, this might be interesting to test… Guess I’ll look where i can get such a sim card for experiments
I did not even know that there were so many options using NFC. Very interesting though.
But remember "Those with a metallic SD card slot won’t work; "
FP2 do have them.
So still there remains the USB option. At least we have an internal USB access point for which some capable enthusiast (here in this forum) realized small projects already. This way can be taken.
I believe this could be another boost if FP would start to develop and offer some useful accessories. I cannot believe these pins were left just for internal tests.
Well, the metallic casing is not the problem …
Did some research:
NFC SIM Card: this is not a card that also sports an nfc interface, but a secured storage area, so that your Wallet using NFC from the phone can access the sensitive payment data from this area
NFC SDHC Card: you can query the card from your nfc enabled phone for storage space and contents…
So, none of those two options offers a NFC chip for a mobile phone that’s got none
