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The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

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Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#181

Post by djbusby »

ghaff wrote: post #149
michaelt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most metro stations have a much simpler way for travellers to figure out what to do: of loads people who do know how it works, ahead of and beside you.

It's getting better but, in my experience, once metro systems got away from manned booths and tokens, the systems worked fine for commuters but led to lots of fumbling and long lines for tourists. Trains in the UK still have a certain amount of "Which of these tickets/receipts go where?" while a line of irritated locals is building up behind you. Fortunately, also being the UK, someone will help you if you're struggl…

With a requisite amount of Tsk-ing I hope.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#182

Post by idunnoman1222 »

lxgr wrote: post #40
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all of that is probably negligible compared to how much disposable foil is used for cooking or packaging.

On one hand it is probably small in comparison, but on the other hand, it seems much more feasible to reuse transit ticket ICs than e.g. food packaging. Many transit agencies do explicitly incentivize reuse, e.g. by offering cheaper fares using a reloadable contactless card and often charging a deposit for that card. Even then, many of these systems have been struggling due to the IC shortage, given the low margins t…

just let people use their phones to open the gate

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#183

Post by ghaff »

djbusby wrote: post #181
ghaff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's getting better but, in my experience, once metro systems got away from manned booths and tokens, the systems worked fine for commuters but led to lots of fumbling and long lines for tourists. Trains in the UK still have a certain amount of "Which of these tickets/receipts go where?" while a line of irritated locals is building up behind you. Fortunately, also being the UK, someone will help you if you're struggl…

With a requisite amount of Tsk-ing I hope.

Not really. My last trip to the UK I ended up--because of a complicated trip--with more of a bag than I should really have had on public transit. I was actually a bit embarrassed but a few folks were super-helpful with tube stations that were, shall we say, not exactly mobility friendly.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#184

Post by Reason077 »

kccqzy wrote: post #141
Sytten wrote: post #108

They are going away soon (TM), the tech is cool but they are impractical. I will be happy to use my credit card or phone. Too many times I have been stuck in 15-20 minutes queues to buy those tickets and you cant refill them with an app... Plus south shore and north shore have they own system it's a mess.

It is theoretically possible to refill it with the phone. You either have a stored value card where the value is stored on the card and have the phone's NFC talk to it, or you store the value in a server that has an API to add value and have the reader at the subway deduct the value from the server.

That’s exactly how online top-ups, and credits/refunds, work with the Oyster card system.

In the old days you’d nominate a specific station, and the credit would be transferred to the card the next time you tapped in at that station.

But now days I don’t think you need to do that: presumably it maintains the balance primarily on the server side now rather than on card.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#185

Post by lxgr »

kens wrote: post #115
ak217 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the write-up. How does this fit into the broader NFC ecosystem? What do other big metro systems like Omny, Clipper, Smartrip etc use? Apple and Google seem to implement some NFC protocols in their devices but in a much more programmable way, how does that work? Is the protocol used in credit cards related at all? And how do these relate to Felica, the system used everywhere in Japan (which was in the news…

That seems like a question for @lxgr :-) As far as I can tell, the NFC ecosystem is a mess of competing, incompatible protocols from different companies, as well as incompatibilities for historical reasons. For example, Clipper uses MIFARE DESFire, which is the more secure sibling of the Ultralight chip that I examined. Washington's SmarTrip cards use MIFARE Plux X. New York City's OMNY, on the other hand, is apparen…

On it, but I couldn't have said it better :) To expand on Felica vs. ISO a bit:

Theoretically Felica is a different stack from ISO 14443, but it's close enough that it almost got specified as a variant of ISO 14443 as well (C; MIFARE and most other systems use A). NFC does specify Felica as one possible official tag type (then called NFC-F, as opposed to NFC-A and NFC-B), so practically, most mobile devices can just also read it.

For anybody wanting to experiment a bit, I can highly recommend getting any Android device and installing NFC tag reader by NXP; it'll show you what technology exactly a given card uses, and in some cases can show you other interesting information as well. There's also an app that lets you read the current balance of various transit cards.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#186

Post by girvo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #164
markus_zhang wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found the same thing with my wife. I'm a technical person, but I'm extremely bad with tools and such, including the ticket thing. If no one shows me how to use it I'll probably figure out a way to insert it somewhere. My wife won't have any problem with this and other small tools. The same thing with IKEA: I always rely on the manual and just blindly follow the instructions, and gets very frustrated if the ins…

> The same thing with IKEA: I always rely on the manual and just blindly follow the instructions, and gets very frustrated if the instructions miss one step. Thing I figured out assembling IKEA stuff in the past few years: if it seems like they skipped a step, look carefully at the details in pictures. Perhaps use a magnifying glass. There's going to be only one way to get from step N to step N+1, and all the informa…

You really do need a magnifying glass for some of those details, as the (asymmetrical) holes that ID which way some part must go become dots at the scale they print some of the manuals. You're absolutely right though: all the info is there, just got to work it out

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#187

Post by ianburrell »

bobthepanda wrote: post #170
ianburrell wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that would require a completely different way to read tickets than are used for stored value cards. Every ticket machine needs way to print which is less reliable than writing NFC chip. It is likely that printing a ticket costs more than NFC. Every fare reader needs two sensors, one NFC and one optical. The optical ones are going to be slower. People are going to get confused about which reader to use.

If people can manage the existence of both an optical scanner and contactless at the self checkout grocery store, this is way overblown. A ticket needs to be printed anyways, the single use ticket with chip does not come from thin air.

But why are you making it worse and more complicated? Disposable NFC card is better, cheaper, and easier to use.

The NFC doesn't need to be printed. It just needs to be dispensed.

My city went from printed paper tickets, that didn't even need to be scanned, to contactless fare system with paper NFC tickets. It saves money having simpler and less used ticket machines. It helps that most people use contactless credit card or fare card. They really should have more signs that can tap phone or credit card cause I suspect tourists think they need to buy ticket.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#188

Post by G4E »

hlandau wrote: post #73

The NFC chip I want still doesn't exist: a CPU and flash I can write a program for, directly, no VMs, no Java, without an NDA'd datasheet. These exist, but they're all behind NDAs and you're not allowed to have them. They're used for e.g. EMV.

You should check out the lpc8N04 from NXP then ;)

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#189

Post by Symbiote »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #112
1oooqooq wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

every single transportation system that uses disposable nfc are definitely making a ton of money for the vendor. and every transportation system that pretends to run as a profit center and not a cost center also makes ton of money for the vendors.

In the systems I’ve ridden, there’s usually some kind of plastic stored-value card for regular riders, and the (more expensive) disposable tickets are only used by occasional riders.

A system I used in China had NFC plastic coins for occasional use, which were collected and refused by the exit barrier.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#190

Post by lxgr »

ak217 wrote: post #96
kens wrote: post #2

Author here for all your NFC chip questions :-)

Thanks for the write-up. How does this fit into the broader NFC ecosystem? What do other big metro systems like Omny, Clipper, Smartrip etc use? Apple and Google seem to implement some NFC protocols in their devices but in a much more programmable way, how does that work? Is the protocol used in credit cards related at all? And how do these relate to Felica, the system used everywhere in Japan (which was in the news…

Apple and Google achieve the same outcome (i.e. something called "card emulation", where an NFC chip can act as an emulated ISO 14443-4 smartcard), but they achieve it through very different ways:

Google just has an Android API for it called HCE (Host Card Emulation), and anybody can write an app that implements it (i.e. Google Pay has no special position compared to competitors). In a nutshell, you just get a callback for every APDU (protocol message) the phone receives from the reader and get to respond as you wish.

Apple embeds a secure element in their devices, which is a chip almost identical to that you'll find in actual physical cards, but with an additional interface that connects it to the application processor, so that the OS and (privileged, i.e. Apple Wallet only) apps can interface with it and load new card applications. That's why the storage in Apple Wallet is limited to 50-ish cards, but Google Pay allows many more :)

Felica is not part of the ISO 14443 family, but closely related and also an official physical layer of NFC (NFC-F), so many devices practically support it as well. To my knowledge, there is no software-based emulation for it though (that's always a bit risky for stored-value cards), so Suica etc. only work on Japanese phone models that have the necessary secure element, as well as on all iPhones (Apple installs a Felica applet into their secure element on demand).

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