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Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

iliana.fyi

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Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#71

Post by vermilingua »

organsnyder wrote: post #12
k8svet wrote: post #4

Oooh, now do Orca cards next. Seattle is one of the tech capitals of the United States, and on top of the metro system just being not great, it's also technically inferior to nearly every single other major city that I've used public transit. Pick any European city, CDMX, Denver. They're all light years ahead of Seattle. Denver might have been my favorite. Fun fact, one of the orgs that runs Orca actually wrote a blo…

My local transit system just added tap-to-pay that works with any credit card (or Apple/Google Pay etc.). As long as you use the same card it handles transfers, multi-day passes, etc. seamlessly as well—it will automatically ensure you're getting the correct rate (e.g. no charge for passes or rides after a certain number within a certain period).

My only gripe with this mode (with Opal in Sydney) is that you don’t get the trip fare displayed on the gate when you pay with a payment card. I imagine this is a technical limitation (Opal stores trip detais on-card, which it can’t do with a payment card), and is a low priority anyway (as you don’t need to know when to top up a payment card) but would be nice to have.

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#72

Post by tantalor »

clintfred wrote: post #27
wandermatt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added an image of my barcode to a location based reminder, so it pops up in a notification when I go to my local library.

That's amazing. Truly. I'm assuming you're on iPhone. Anyone know if there is a way to do this in Android?

https://support.google.com/keep/answer/3187168

> You can set reminders to go off at a certain time or place

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#73

Post by lxgr »

monksy wrote: post #51
organsnyder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local transit system just added tap-to-pay that works with any credit card (or Apple/Google Pay etc.). As long as you use the same card it handles transfers, multi-day passes, etc. seamlessly as well—it will automatically ensure you're getting the correct rate (e.g. no charge for passes or rides after a certain number within a certain period).

This system really sucks because you can't just slide your wallet over the reader. It'll pick up your cc before your transit pass. The move to do tap based transit with cc s is pretty stupid as that cc s get replace far more frequently than transit cards. The only person this really benefits is new users to the system that haven't figured out how to get a transit card yet.

> The only person this really benefits is new users to the system that haven't figured out how to get a transit card yet.

In many transit systems, that's millions of people per year: Tourists, occasional riders that would just forget the pass at home if they're not using it regularly etc.

> This system really sucks because you can't just slide your wallet over the reader. It'll pick up your cc before your transit pass.

There's theoretically ways to preferentially pick a given type of card, but it's quite hard and unreliable to implement, so I guess that rather than promising something they can't reliably deliver (and slowing things down in the process), transit systems just pick the first card.

It is slightly inconvenient for transit-pass-only users, but I do also see the huge benefits for the transit system and its users in aggregate.

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#74

Post by lxgr »

gattilorenz wrote: post #32
k8svet wrote: post #4

Oooh, now do Orca cards next. Seattle is one of the tech capitals of the United States, and on top of the metro system just being not great, it's also technically inferior to nearly every single other major city that I've used public transit. Pick any European city, CDMX, Denver. They're all light years ahead of Seattle. Denver might have been my favorite. Fun fact, one of the orgs that runs Orca actually wrote a blo…

Related: isn't there a way to "clone" an NFC card using (rooted) Android? I have been looking into how feasible it could be doing so on iOS since my office door opens via an NFC card, but iirc Apple has a tighter grip on the NFC hardware than with general PassKit, meaning that a regular app can't do that.

Only very old systems, or those where the cost of the tag has to be as low as possible (e.g. for single-ride throwaway paper tickets), use unauthenticated bearer tokens.

Access control systems these days usually do not, for obvious reasons.

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#75

Post by lxgr »

robryk wrote: post #37
amluto wrote: post #2

> for some reason, passes are cryptographically signed, and they have to be signed with a key known to one of Apple’s certificate authorities. Cryptographically signing these files makes some sense when you consider that passes were designed to get automatic updates from their vendors; for example, your boarding pass for a flight reflecting gate changes or changing your seat assignment. How does this make sense? Ther…

Having the initial pass specify the public key that it accepts for updates would be sufficient. Having an association with an Apple developer account doesn't help for the updates problem at all AFAICT. The only reason I came up with for the blessed-by-Apple requirement I came up with is selling fake tickets. There is no way to tell (with or without that requirement) whether a pkpass file with a "ticket to concert X"…

Yeah, I also found the justifications for Apple requiring passes to be signed pretty vague. Locking things down is just the default for Apple; it's usually only in later iterations that they open up integrations to the broader ecosystem.

On the face of it, it's really weird to require passes to be signed: I can always just store a PNG or PDF showing the same bar code in my photo library or files app and present that. Imagine iOS only displaying signed PDFs!

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#76

Post by lxgr »

cglong wrote: post #28

This was a great blogpost, but then ends with: > I will note that I have not yet tested this pass in a real library yet I get this project was mostly for fun, but why not spend the 10 minutes it takes to test the final solution before sharing your work?

I mean, it's ultimately a bunch of pixels representing a barcode to be scanned. As long as it displays correctly, what could go wrong?

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#77

Post by dmoy »

Kye wrote: post #46
Analemma_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing about going fare-free-- which people don't like to discuss but it is a real effect which has been measured-- is that it causes much more anti-social behavior on the bus, which decreases ridership among people who have only a slight preference for transit versus just driving their car. This not only makes traffic worse (which kinda defeats the whole purpose), it also tanks political support for transit…

Can you point to where you found this measurement? This is the first I've heard of it.

I first heard of it from the transit union here in Seattle when they axed the downtown free bus zone like 10 years ago. There was some vague mention of the bus drivers in ... somewhere in Texas... like 30 years before that.

Beyond that I haven't heard much of it because as I understand it, there isn't much free transit anywhere big.

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#78

Post by lxgr »

Ayesh wrote: post #29

Those cheap laser "1D" bar code scanners cannot read off a screen (except maybe eInk). It sucks because the supermarkets I frequent have their loyalty cards based off barcodes. Fortunately, barcode readers emulate keyboards so you can just type the code on a keyboard.

As far as I understand, that's because older systems don't use a digital image sensor to scan these, but rather a rotating laser beam and a simple photo diode registering the variations in brightness caused by varying reflections of the laser beam by the white and black parts of the barcode.

A camera-based scanner doesn't care where the illumination of the barcode is coming from (i.e. ambient light, its own LED illuminating a piece of paper, or an active backlit screen); that laser-based system is purely based on its own reflected light, though, and won't work with actively backlit screens at all. (I wonder if it works with e-ink or passive LCD displays!)

Re: Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

#79

Post by lxgr »

samtho wrote: post #42
Ayesh wrote: post #29

Those cheap laser "1D" bar code scanners cannot read off a screen (except maybe eInk). It sucks because the supermarkets I frequent have their loyalty cards based off barcodes. Fortunately, barcode readers emulate keyboards so you can just type the code on a keyboard.

I made a cheap barcode display-er with a Bluetooth MCU and an E-ink display, that works for all 1D only barcode scanners.

That's really neat! Real-life Doctor Who psychic paper, basically :)
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