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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

#211

Post by stacktrust »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #165
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around that time, I recall there being a lot of hype around RFID tags. E.g. the Touchatag was just a bunch of RFID tags and a USB RFID reader, but marketed as a consumer product. This never really seems to have caught on, though. Nowadays, I suppose most consumers do have RFID tags (debit cards, transport cards, building keys, e-Passports), they just might not be aware of the underlying technology.

All the patents and "sekhurity" isn't helping. A decade ago, I ended up with a bunch of programmable NFC stickers that my Galaxy S7 suddenly wasn't able to read, because some MIFARE intellectual property issue retroactively bricked this class of NFC stickers. Good luck figuring out where on the compatibility matrix the Amazon listing you're looking at is.

We need a name for the phase of innovation curves after IP warlords have completed vision quests, leaving a stable landscape.

This vendor has an array of RFID products: https://gototags.com

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#212

Post by seabass-labrax »

Aeolun wrote: post #204
oopsallmagic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the fault of the system, or the fault of the tourists for visiting a new place and not reading up on local customs?

“Make the damn train work” is not a local custom. Aside from that the UK rail system is so complicated and expensive you’d expect a manned gate at every station at the least. £150 from London to Leeds?! I can fly halfway across Europe for less…

£165.90, to be precise (anytime single). Or, if you travel late-morning to early-afternoon, £70.20 (super off-peak single). By booking weeks or months in advance, you can travel for as little as £22.50 (advance single).

The unofficial BR Fares[1] website does a lot to untangle the complexity, although it can only do so much to mitigate the expense.

[1]: https://www.brfares.com/

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#213

Post by Reason077 »

n_plus_1_acc wrote: post #173
Reason077 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”the chip is so minuscule that the amount of waste is trivial” It does add significant costs to the transport system. Single-use NFC cards must cost at least a few cents to produce and dispense, which adds up when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of rides every day. Even reusable NFC cards are costly in terms of providing all the infrastructure to support them: software, servers, enough top-up…

Do they still issue single use tickets for transfers between the Heathrow Terminals?

Last time I checked, yes. There’s a machine where you press a button for a free ticket that works the ticket gates.

Unfortunately the days where you could ride the buses for free around the whole Heathrow area are gone, however.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#214

Post by lxgr »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #106
justusthane wrote: post #21

This is fascinating. We were just in Europe where we experienced these tickets for the first time. I had trouble with them; I was trying to figure out how to scan them because it never occurred to me that they might contain an NFC chip. My wife, on the other hand, who is not at all technical, took it for granted that you would tap them and immediately figured it out intuitively.

Does the card not have the three-arcs nfc symbol? Similar to the wifi symbol. To me the fake printed dip-chip is more confusing!

The fake chip is definitely weird!

The logo you mention (four arcs actually) is owned by EMVco though, and they let people only use it for credit and debit card contactless payment cards.

There’s also an NFC logo, but as mentioned elsewhere, these cards aren’t really NFC cards, so that would also not be the right thing to use (I believe the NFC forum wants something to happen when you touch anything bearing that logo with your phone).

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#215

Post by lxgr »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #105
marssaxman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny - I'm sure I would have shared your confusion, as all tappable objects in my world are made of plastic. I wonder how your wife thought of it?

> ... as all tappable objects in my world are made of plastic yup in mine plastic and metal but not paper.

Probably a mix of plastic and metal: Full metal cards don’t actually support contactless interfaces!

Two common ways of getting around that is to either sandwich a plastic part containing the antenna to a metal one, or to punch out a circular part in the middle of the metal card and put the antenna in there (and close it all up using more plastic).

One card that doesn’t do either is the Apple Card – and as a result, you can’t tap it!

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#216

Post by Reason077 »

lxgr wrote: post #175
Reason077 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s noticeable if you’re used to the instant response of Oyster, but we’re talking about a few hundred extra milliseconds. Not something that bothers you once you’re accustomed to it. It’s still fast enough that it will read my Apple Watch before the gate starts to close from the passenger in front of me. One saved trip to an Oyster top-up machine will make up for a lifetime of contactless NFC latency!

Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet? The Japanese transit cards that are supported by Apple Pay have that option, and it's arguably the best of both worlds.

> ”Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet?”

It is, there’s even an auto top-up option that adds credit automatically if your balance drops below a certain level.

But there’s no “digital” Oyster card, only physical ones. If you want to use a device to pay you have to use contactless.

And either way, it’s still kind of a pain to have to maintain a balance - especially if you’re a tourist or visitor and don’t know exactly how much credit you’re going to need.

I agree that being able to load a transit card into Apple Pay etc is also a good solution. The convenience of not having a physical card that can be easily lost or forgotten is probably the biggest benefit for me.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#218

Post by lxgr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #165
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around that time, I recall there being a lot of hype around RFID tags. E.g. the Touchatag was just a bunch of RFID tags and a USB RFID reader, but marketed as a consumer product. This never really seems to have caught on, though. Nowadays, I suppose most consumers do have RFID tags (debit cards, transport cards, building keys, e-Passports), they just might not be aware of the underlying technology.

All the patents and "sekhurity" isn't helping. A decade ago, I ended up with a bunch of programmable NFC stickers that my Galaxy S7 suddenly wasn't able to read, because some MIFARE intellectual property issue retroactively bricked this class of NFC stickers. Good luck figuring out where on the compatibility matrix the Amazon listing you're looking at is.

MIFARE (classic) tags were never really compliant with any industry standard (whether freely available or patent-encumbered) and are not actually NFC tags, so many systems betting on that but later wanting to e.g. change reader chip vendors ended up with issues such as this. (There's a way of writing NFC/NDEF-formatted data to them, but it's only readable by NXP chips.)

If you buy any standard NFC forum tag, chances are pretty good that it'll work with any Android or iOS device. The Ntag series has worked pretty well for me on both OSes and across various phones; I have one that instantly and cross-platform rickrolls everybody tapping it.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#219

Post by seabass-labrax »

ghaff wrote: post #183
djbusby wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not a Londoner, but I am British, and so feel qualified to say that you don't need to feel embarrassed :) I've travelled with over 100L of luggage on the Tube before - it's my contribution to the trains' traction!

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#220

Post by gumby »

lukan wrote: post #166
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…

"I always rely on the manual and just blindly follow the instructions, and gets very frustrated if the instructions miss one step" But why do people make incomplete manuals? If I have a step by step guidance and it doesn't work, because some steps were left out, than this is just a wrong manual! (I share your frustration)

Typically this means they stepped the design and didn't bother to revise the doc, or used up the stock of manuals for the old version before starting on the new ones.
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